Most relationships begin with attraction. One person is attracted to another. Attraction doesn’t need to be mutual. It’s a nice bonus when it is.
Couples in which neither party found the other attractive upon first meeting have still been able to achieve great relationships. What makes one person attractive to another is unique to each individual. What and whom you will find attractive is imprinted on your brain at a very early age, and reason plays no part.
Attraction is almost useless after a couple advances into a relationship. Some experts even suggest that attractiveness is a negative factor, because of the higher incidence of outsiders “hitting on” an especially attractive man or woman who is married.
If an especially attractive person ties his or her self-worth to being attractive, it can cause that person difficulty as age diminishes attractiveness.
(Don't get your shorts in a twist because this is an 'old fashioned' word. It's what these behaviors are called.)
Most relationships advance by the use of courting behaviors. One party or both express their interest in, or attraction to, the other by using age appropriate courting behaviors.
In teen-agers, these may include teasing, bumping, touching, being attentive and around all the time.
In adults, courting rituals may include flirting, frequent phone calls, dating, flowers, gifts, dancing, and other outward demonstrations of interest, attraction and affection.
Once the relationship is confirmed by marriage or living together, the courting behaviors and rituals gradually, (or quickly) fade away.
If you are lucky, you may experience infatuation on your way to a bonded relationship. Infatuation is a temporary state of madness in which your partner can do no wrong, has no faults, and is perfect in virtually every way.
Infatuation is the stuff that poems and songs are written about. Infatuation feels so good, and so “right” that it is very easy to make really unwise decisions. During infatuation, nothing else matters very much. School, Goals, Dreams, Family, Friends and Work all fade in importance relative to your partner.
Infatuation is not love. (It couldn't be, because it always goes away and love stays; if you treat it well.)
Infatuation isn’t necessary to achieving a great relationship. It’s fun, magical, exhausting, and very temporary. It will fade away. It will soon be gone and gone forever. You can’t get it back. You can’t have it again with that person.
It feels so good that a few people become addicted and become serial infatuators. Again, infatuation is not love.
Reality is what comes right after infatuation. Reality is where the madness of infatuation fades away and you once again have access to your senses.
You see your partner in a new light. Compared to your view during infatuation, the new light is glaring and less pleasant. Many people go into denial of reality because they prefer the distorted wonders of infatuation. But, gradually, even denial can’t protect you from reality.
Reality is the often the source of “cold feet” and “second thoughts” that can occur just prior to marriage. To successfully survive reality, the relationship requires that one or both of the partners have “coping” skills.
When neither have the skills, the relationship will likely be short lived, with marriage or without.
Bonding refers to the bonds forged by shared experiences. All that may be left from the courting and infatuation phases are the memories of the shared experiences.
The strength of forged bonds depends on the strength of the emotions felt during the experience. Infatuation is valuable in that it arouses enormously strong emotions, so the couple share many experiences made extraordinary by being shared while feeling powerful emotions.
It is these bonds — forged during all phases of the relationship process — that make up the initial quantity of “Love” felt by the couple. Finally, we have real ‘love.’
For the rest of the relationship, that love can be enhanced and grow through sharing experiences while feeling positive emotions together. Or, it can be diminished and eroded by sharing experiences while feeling emotional pain and hurt.
The bonds of shared positive experiences are the basis of real, adult, mature love. Remembering and replaying the positive bonding moments again and again throughout the duration of the relationship will strengthen those positive bonds, and result in a stronger feeling of love. Love will grow, because each replay of the loving experience adds another bond, and the total grows.
As the relationship proceeds, “issues” will arise. Issues are points of difference between the partners that create bad feelings for one or both of the partners.
The partners easily deal with most issues. He puts the toilet seat down because it upsets her to fall in when she backs in, in the dark. She stops hanging her lingerie on the shower curtain bar because it gets in the way when he showers. These are the normal, natural, changes people make when the change doesn’t affect deeply held opinions, self-visions, goals, or life decisions. (In other words, the cost of change is low.)
A second set of issues always arises. These issues are not easily resolved, and in fact, may be irresolvable. To over simplify somewhat, the way the partners deal with the irresolvable issues could determine the long-term fate of the relationship.
Irresolvable issues typically stem from ‘life decisions’ or ‘self-images’ that causes the partners to be or behave in ways that conflict with each other. Several examples may help clarify the kinds of issues that are irresolvable.
Both partners grew up poor, in trailer parks in the South. Her mother taught her that poverty was a burden that could be handled with dignity. Their trailer was always neat as a pin, and the yard was immaculate. In her early teens she vowed that she would handle life with “dignity and class,” regardless of what her life brought.
He grew up proud to be a “redneck.” He aspired to a truck, a dog, a wife with lots of kids, and a ‘working man’s’ job that would give him time to fish and hunt on the weekends. He held the “suits” in distain, and he ridiculed anybody that acted like a “yuppy,” or wasn’t a loyal American “working man.”
He and she married, had a few kids, and ran smack into their primary irresolvable issue. She wanted nice things for the house, a neat yard and garden, good manners for the kids, and a mini-van. These were things that she equated with having being refined and living with dignity. These things were important to her because they stemmed from a life decision about who she was and who she always would be.
He thought she was trying to “put on the dog” and “be like a yuppie.” What she wanted conflicted directly with his life decision to be who he was and live the way he thought was ‘right.’ What made the issue irresolvable was that neither was going to change.
The ‘cost’ of change was too great. Their individual life decisions were at stake. What made it all the worse, is that he actually believed the things that she wanted flew in the face of who he was and what he wanted.
She grew up an a family that always lived on ‘the edge.’ They lived paycheck to paycheck, and always ended up with more bills than money. Her father spent money on liquor and poker, and the family suffered.
She decided that her life would be different. She would always spend less than she earned, and save diligently for retirement, college for the kids, and a “rainy day.” She vowed never, ever, would she have to deal again with bill collectors in her life.
He grew up in a family with a father who was the opposite of hers. His father pinched every penny until it squeaked. The toys, fancy sneakers, and gadgets that his friends had were “unnecessary extravagances,” according to his father, so he had none of them. He couldn’t wait to leave home, earn his own living, and get whatever he wanted and needed, without having to explain or defend his purchases to his father.
When the couple fell in love and married, they both had good educations, good jobs, and earned good incomes. Their irresolvable issue had to do with his spending. He spent more than they earned between them, and ran up big debts with mortgages and fancy cars.
She wanted to spend less than they earned and save for the future. They were in constant conflict over the money issue, and it was irresolvable because of their conflicting life decisions. Neither would change, and neither wanted to change.
Even if you and your partner can’t imagine that you will have irresolvable issues, you will. Some won’t show up until events occur, like having a child. Issues around the child can seldom be anticipated, but there will likely be some; how to discipline, etc.
Another issue might occur with the incapacity of a parent. One may feel like they have to take a sick mother to live with them, the other may not.
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Coping is the process of dealing immediately with bad feelings (so they don’t fester and grow), and deciding whether the issue can be resolved with action, or resolved with negotiation, or whether it must be accepted and/or forgiven.
If you learn to cope successfully, you will have bad feeling episodes less often, for a shorter duration, and they erode your bundle of loving feelings less.
Shifting from strong negative emotions immediately into a questioning mode, where you engage your mind with questions, will allow you to cope successfully with issues, rather than allowing emotions to rule.
Effective coping will enable you to have fewer, shorter, and milder episodes of bad feelings about your partner.
Marking is a process whereby you take special notice of, or remember a positive experience shared with your partner, recall it vividly, re-experience the good feelings you just had, or had at that time in the past, and engage as many as possible of your senses in marking your memory.
You mark it by reminding your partner about it, or telling someone about it, or if alone, just laugh, and smile, and tell yourself about it.
Marking takes a loving shared experience and makes it larger, or stronger.
Marking reinforces the bond, and increases feelings of love for your partner.
You can create a truly magnificent relationship by resolving all bad feeling episodes as quickly as possible, and marking all present and past good feeling episodes as strongly as you can.
By making a habit of coping and marking, you maximize the benefits of shared good experiences and minimize the damage of shared bad experiences.
The net result is to enable the bonds of love to grow over time and get stronger and stronger.
Everything up to this point is covered in great detail in the six e-books that make up the Metamating Series.
Everything from here forward is digested from the extensive research done by the absolutely best expert on Marriage, Dr. John Gottman and his colleagues at the Gottman Institute in Seattle.
Dr. Gottman can predict with astounding accuracy how long a marriage will last and whether and when it might end in divorce.
With apologies to Dr. Gottman, and with the deepest respect for his many books and endless research, I will attempt to make his extensive findings ridiculously simple to understand.
Positivity refers to the ratio of positive to negative messages one partner gives the other. The messages can be verbal or physical. Messages can be given by gestures, attending or just listening.
Successful marriages, with a very low risk of divorce, maintain a positivity ratio of at least 5 to 1. Negative messages are so damaging that it takes 5 positive messages to repair the damage.
Couples with high positivity should find it easy to start ‘issue’ discussions respectfully and with a positive tone. Discussions that start positively have a much better chance of actually achieving a good result. Whether the discussion achieved a successful result or not, it is important that the discussion also end on a positive note.
Couples would be wise to avoid “issue” discussions about issues that are irresolvable. Irresolvable issues are best treated with humor and acceptance, rather than ‘discussions.’
Divorce is an enormous penalty to pay for marital mistakes. Divorce affects far more people than just the two in the relationship. Families, children, neighbors, friends and co-workers are all affected negatively when a marriage breaks up.
Sick marriages can be revived. The skills that it takes to make a great marriage can be easily learned and made into habits.
Relationships decline when there is low positivity, and when ‘issue’ discussions start poorly and get worse.
If one or both of the parties are volatile and explosive, issue discussions turn quickly into fights. Fights turn quickly into hurtful, exaggerated, insulting and degrading affairs that create a very negative, powerfully emotional shared experience.
One partner or both can make the damage worse by replaying the experience over again in memory. In the same way that it is valuable to ‘Mark” good, loving experiences to build loving bonds, it is damaging to ‘mark’ bad, hateful experiences by reliving and remembering them.
According to Dr. Gottman's research, Volatile couples who fight explosively with damaging and hurtful messages and strong negative emotions are on track to divorce within 3 to 5 years … or maybe even in the first year.
Sometimes one or both parties will attempt to get back at their partner for negative messages or hurtful ‘issue’ discussions, by withdrawal or withholding. One way to stay out of fights is just not to talk to your partner. Another way to fight without seeming to fight is to simply withhold affection, services, attention or sexual participation.
Withdrawal and withholding may protect against damaging fights, but they are both negative and defeat the positivity required to make the relationship nourishing and rewarding.
This kind of marriage is most likely to divorce around 12 to 16 years.
Turning a sick relationship around is easy to describe and hard to do. It involves four steps and enormous commitment and persistence.
Step 1. It may be useful to tell your partner that you recognize you have problems, and you are going to take some steps with hopes of making the relationship better. Tell your partner that you are doing this out of love, and hopes for a better future.
Ask your partner to recognize that you will make mistakes and stumble and fall from time to time, but you intend to persist and make the relationship work.
It is valuable to free your partner from any blame and take all the responsibility onto yourself.
Step 2. Begin immediately to practice being positive. Give your partner at least 5 and maybe 8 positive messages for every negative message.
Step 3. Identify all of the irresolvable issues between you, and practice handling those issues with acceptance, forgiveness and humor. If your partner demands changes from you, on an irresolvable issue, treat your partner respectfully, decline to discuss it because you are convinced it is irresolvable, and increase the positivity and humor level to show an effort to make amends.
Step 4. Mentally commit to start the relationship over. Remember the love with which you two started out. Mark the bonding experiences that once held you close. Cope wisely with any negative feelings that arise because you are doing all the work.
With high positivity, few if any negative ‘issue’ discussions, and by marking and helping your partner re-experience the positive experiences with which you bonded, you can restore the relationship to a healthy, loving state. (If your partner is willing.)
• It must seem easier to let a sick relationship slip away to divorce than to turn it around by yourself. That may be why about 50% of all marriages end in divorce.
• Divorce is a lousy experience and a terrible answer. Divorce doesn’t teach you the skills you need to make a relationship work. (Coping, Marking, Positivity, & identifying irresolvable issues) As a result, you’re not likely to make your next relationship work either. (The divorce statistics for second marriages is even worse than for first marriages.)
• Everything you need to learn, and everything you need to practice has been brought together for you, in one place, along with the experts who can help you if you get stuck, and a bunch of other people who are mastering the same skills along with you and understand what you are going through … and the gift you are giving your partner.
• If you learn these skills, and practice them, and your partner still is steering your relationship toward divorce, at least, you will be incredibly well equipped to make your next relationship succeed.
If you would like to explore any of these secrets further, or learn the skills necessary to use them confidently, go to:HappierRelationships
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