Six things you can do to maximize your relationship.

Noozhawk.com - local news and information for Santa Barbara County - Local News - Russell Collins: Love Among the Ruins

Six things you can do to minimize your stress and maximize your relationship.

» Treat each other with respect — be conscious about this, especially when you are feeling disrespectful.>

» Use the 5-to-1 rule: Five positive, affirming communications to your partner for every one negative. (This doesn’t limit your ability to complain, by the way; just make sure you have lots of good things to say, too.) >

» Be aware of the “Four Horsemen” of destructive communications, which are, according to relationship researcher John Gottman: (1)criticism, (2) stonewalling, (3) defensiveness and (4) contempt. Of these, beware particularly of contempt — it’s the relationship killer nonpareil.>

» Make an agreement with your partner to walk away when the argument gets heated. Have a word or signal between you that says “I’m cutting off this argument because I care deeply about our relationship and want to protect it. We can talk more when we cool down.”>

» Notice how deep your commitment is to “being right” when you argue. Then do a cost-benefit analysis. Are the costs to the relationship worth the benefit of winning the argument? >

» Awareness of rigid patterns of reactivity — and how they play out in our relationships — can end their tyranny over our lives. According to current theory, during periods of relationship stress, old abandonment terrors from childhood well up with their original intensity: my caregiver doesn’t love me and may abandon me, and I can’t survive in this world all alone. The technical term for this way of thinking about relationships is “Adult Attachment Theory.” We protect ourselves from this unconscious terror by becoming defensive and withdrawing behind a wall, or by attacking our partner with criticism and contempt. Defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism and contempt. These are Gottman’s Four Horsemen revisited. But where the behavior-change techniques I mentioned above treat the Four Horsemen as unhealthy and unwanted, through the lens of Attachment Theory they show up as the natural, self-protective mechanisms of a terrified child. These defensive mechanisms don’t work very well in our current situation as adults, of course. But because they arise unconsciously from more primitive parts of our brain, we feel safer when we employ them — for the moment at least.

Read full article: http://www.noozhawk.com/local_news/article/0122_russell_collins_love_among_the_ruins/

***********************************************************************
This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.