How The 'Little Things' Make Or Break A Relationship
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Loading... - Simon Sterling
- 03 Mar 2023
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He comes home from work exhausted again. He crashes onto the living room sofa, takes a deep breath, and turns on his favorite show. All he wants to do is decompress in silence.
As if on cue, he hears the back door open. His wife is home, and somehow, she's more chipper than ever. As she enters the room and removes her coat, she takes a moment to pause at the front window, saying, “What beautiful weather — it’s just lovely today.”
What should he do next? The answer, according to most relationship advice, may matter more than you think.
Dr. John Gottman has spent his career studying what makes or breaks relationships, and what he has discovered is as practical as it is important. Through his research, he has been able to identify what qualities and practices make a couple of masters of their relationship, as well as what can make a relationship turn into a disaster.
How emotional bids for attention make or break relationships
Gottman found a subtle but significant difference between the masters and disasters that strongly predicts the future of their relationships: in the small, everyday moments of life together, relationship masters are much more responsive to their partner’s attempts to engage with them.
These attempts at engagement, or emotional bids, are any effort on the part of one partner to connect or get their partner’s attention. These bids can be as glaringly obvious as a direct request for cuddling at bedtime or as subtle as an indirect comment about the weather addressed to no one in particular.
Gottman found that partners who consistently responded positively — or turned toward — each other’s emotional bids or the little things in a relationship were significantly more likely to feel satisfied and stay together over time than those who did not.
In a six-year study of newlyweds, Gottman discovered that couples who stayed together turned toward each other’s emotional bids 86 percent of the time. In contrast, those who went on to divorce turned toward each other’s bids only 33 percent of the time.
Over time, all of the little things in a relationship and seemingly insignificant moments of daily life become something of immense importance. Read More…
