The “Mystery of Love” is Solved
For much of human existence, we believed love and relationship happiness and stability was a mystery. It’s been so often defined as this intangible thing that just sort of happens between two people. Today, the mystery is solved.
We create love with another human being through tiny moments every day. In their outstanding book, The Love Prescription, 7 Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy, the married psychologists, Dr. John and Julie Gottman, explain that, “A relationship is not one thing, but a million tiny things, every day, for a lifetime” (Gottman & Gottman, 2022, p. xi).
They continue, “Love is a practice. More than a feeling, it’s an action. It’s something you do, not something that just happens to you. And you need to give – and get – a daily dose to maintain a healthy, thriving relationship. The surprising thing is, it’s not about grand gestures. It’s not a Valentine’s Day bouquet or a last-minute trip to Paris. It’s not John Cusack standing outside your bedroom window with a boom box. Instead, it’s all about the little things done often…We’ve all heard the phrase, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’. It might be good life advice, but when it comes to love, it’s 100 percent wrong. Love is all about the small stuff. And it’s time to sweat” (Gottman & Gottman, 2022, p. xiii).
The Gottmans’ work with at least 40,000 couples across the planet over decades reveals that these small things often come down predominantly to 3 critical areas, all of which most notably form a relationship’s friendship. To create love, on a daily basis, we need to consistently invest in these 3 areas: love maps (how much does a couple know one another inside-and-out), shared fondness and admiration, and turning toward versus away/against. For the purposes of this blog, we will look at the last one.
What is Turning Toward versus Away/Against?
All throughout our days and lives, we make bids for our partner’s connection. These attempts range from small to large, subtle to overt.
Some examples:
· Reuniting at the end of the day and talking about how it went
· Calling our partner’s name
· Our partner sits beside us
· S/he walks in the door after a long day at work and sighs
· S/he marches in the door furiously
· S/he enters the door thrilled, smiling ear-to-ear
· Your partner, scrolling through his/her phone says, “Oh this is an interesting article”
· Your wife asks, “Are we out of butter?”
· You overhear your husband grumbling as he’s folding the laundry
· Your partner frustratedly asks, “When do you ever fill up the gas tank?”
We Have 3 Options When it Comes to These Attempts to Connect.
We can either turn toward, turn way, or turn against. Our relationship future rests predominantly on which of these 3 doors we walk through and how often we choose to walk through them.
Turning Toward:
· “You give a positive/affirmative response, where you acknowledge the other person and work to engage with their attempt to connect. (Even a ‘hmm?’ can count as turning toward).
Turning Away:
· You give no response, either actively ignoring or just not noticing your partner’s attempts to connect.
Turning Against:
· You respond irritably or angrily, thereby actively shutting down your partner’s attempts to connect” (Gottman & Gottman, 2022, p. 5).
Why it’s So Critical to Turn Towards as Often as Possible
Dr. John and Julie Gottmans’ first big study featured 130 newlywed couples. What they found illuminates why it’s extraordinarily powerful whether we regularly turn toward versus away/against.
They followed these couples for over a decade through their honeymoons, pregnancies, and, for a significant portion of them, divorce. They uncovered that, for the divorced couples, they had only turned toward their partner’s bids for connection a mere 33% of the time. Meanwhile, the couples who still thrived and maintained consistent happiness for much of that time had turned toward one another at least 86% of the time.
“If we could help couples understand the importance of these little moments that might seem like nothing, just slipping by under the radar, we could really help people turn things around. How people reacted to their partner’s bids for connection was in fact the biggest predictor of happiness and relationship stability. These fleeting little moments, it turned out, spelled the difference between happiness and unhappiness, between lasting love and divorce” (Gottman & Gottman, 2022, p. 7).
A culture of turning towards also creates other magical and lasting effects. In the book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert, Dr. John Gottman and Nan Silver detail that “A tendency to turn toward your partner is the basis of trust, emotional connection, passion, and a satisfying sex life. Comical as it may sound, romance is strengthened in the supermarket aisle when your partner asks, ‘Are we out of butter?’ and you answer, ‘I don’t know. Let me go get some just in case,’ instead of shrugging apathetically (turning away). It grows when you know your spouse is having a bad day at work and you take a few seconds out of your schedule to send him an encouraging text. In all these instances, partners are making a choice to turn toward each other rather than away/against (Gottman & Silver, 2015, p.88).
Funding Our Emotional Bank Account
Perhaps the most crucial reason for turning toward attempts to connect the vast majority of the time is as follows: Each time we turn toward attempts to connect, we are depositing “emotional money” into our “emotional bank account”. Each time, we are “building up savings that, like money in the bank, can serve as a cushion when times get rough, when they’re faced with a major life stress or conflict. Because they have stored an abundance of goodwill, such couples are less likely to teeter over into distrust and chronic negativity” (Gottman & Silver, 2015, p. 88-89).
What about When the Opposite Occurs?
Just as funding our “emotional bank account” at least 8.6/10 attempts creates a cushion of good will, fosters trust and dependency, and is the biggest predictor of happiness and relational stability, the opposite is the case when we neglect to “save up our emotional money” in a diligent and correct way.
In the book, What Makes Love Last? How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal: Secrets from the Love Lab, Dr. John Gottman and Nan Silver explain the following: “An abundance of unhappy endings to these interactions [bids for connection] without subsequent discussion about what happened does precipitate danger. Over time, one partner or both begin to wonder: Do I come first, or does someone or something else matter more. Is my partner selfish? Can I risk continuing to trust”? (Gottman & Silver, 2012, p. 33).
When it comes to responding to our partner’s bids for connection, and either of us turn away or against, if the “offending partner” takes responsibility, apologizes, empathizes with the pain inflicted on his/her partner, and details plans on how s/he will protect from this happening in the future, the breach can be repaired.
“If, instead, the partner turns away/against and does not work to repair, the ensuring hurt and anger trigger what I call a regrettable incident – an eruption of conflict that becomes an unfortunate part of the relationship’s history. Each regrettable incident chisels away a bit at the couple’s mutual trust” (Gottman & Silver, 2012, p. 33).
And Let’s Go Even Further…the Zeigarnik Effect Kicks in
“The Zeigarnik effect, coined by a psychologist to describe a core attribute of how our brain’s work, then gets our relationship into further turmoil. This effect describes the fact that “we have much better recall for events that we have not completed than for those we have…We are twice as likely to recall ‘unfinished issues’ compared with those we have processed or in some manner put to rest. Between lovers, arguments that end with confessions, amends, and deeper understanding of one another tend to be soon forgotten, although their legacy is a stronger, more enduring relationship. But, when these attempts to connect are met with turning away or against, and we don’t work to talk about and heal them in proper ways, the hurt remains accessible in our active memory, available to be rehashed again and again” (Gottman & Silver, 2012, p. 35).
“Like a stone in one’s shoe, the recollection becomes a constant irritant that leads to an increase in negative attitudes about one’s partner” (Gottman & Silver, 2012, p. 35).
This Pattern Over Times Leads to Love’s Death.
Overall, when love dies, and a relationship ends, it’s almost never an instant process. It’s almost always the rest of a thousand cuts to the relationship armor, almost always, at least in large part, due to the following pattern: repeated turning away/against and failing to talk about, heal, and prevent these immensely painful and devastating knife wounds to the relationship. The Zeignarik Effect kicks in so we often and loudly recall all this hurt and devastation. We think back to all of these moments we attempted to connect with our partner and s/he was rarely there in the way we required. These moments are all about trust and dependency, and so we realize, we do not and cannot trust and depend on our partner because of all these painful misses. And so, the pebble in our relationship’s shoe, rubbing up against our feet, irritating us for years, now causes a gash in our foot. Relational blood is spilled and the relationship dies.
Want to Learn More About Turning Toward and How to Improve on it in Your Relationship?
It can be overwhelming to think about how to hold yourself accountable so often to catch and respond correctly to your partner’s bids for connection. At Stress Solutions, we can teach you strategies to make this process as easy and smooth as possible. We would be thrilled to help you learn more about turning toward and how to work to seamlessly incorporate it into your lives so you can have the mutually beneficial and lasting relationship you deserve.
Go ahead and give us a call for your free phone consultation with a therapist at Stress Solutions in San Diego, California. We are devoted to helping you and your partner uncover the damaging patterns you are enduring and work to break them so you two can be your best selves the vast majority of the time.
