Fighting Fair – How can we do it?

Couples usually ask me if happy couples fight and if fighting in their relationship is a bad sign.  I answer by saying that research shows that happy couples do fight and that fighting is normal and healthy for the relationship.  I also mention that as a therapist, I am often more concerned about the couples that do not fight than those that do.  In fact, if you never fight it usually means that you are being extremely cautious and this is not healthy for the relationship.  Consider trying to dance together while constantly watching where you place your feet.  Never fighting also usually means that these couples do not learn to repair and rebuild.

In searching for rules to fighting fair online, you could probably find a ton of websites, blogs, and articles describing the steps couples should take to survive conflict.  Some of the more common rules are “stay calm” or “take a time out”.  These rules may work for some couples and can provide some great structure to their conflict to prevent the fight from escalating to war.  However, according to Sue Johnson, author of Hold Me Tight, there are a few things that actually work in fighting fair.

The happiest and healthiest couples, based on what we know, go and repair the rift between them after the fight is over.  Knowing how to repair after a fight can make all the difference.  The myth that bad feelings will just fade over time is a myth for a reason.  According to brain research, your brain holds onto danger signals and negative emotions to try to protect you and help you avoid them in the future.

So the best advice about fighting is:

• Reach for your courage and your partner, and make up!
• Soothe those hurt feelings.
• Help each other to feel safe again.
It helps to talk about your own emotions here instead of your partner’s behavior. You can both assume, if it was a serious fight, that you scared the hell out of each other. When you show your partner that you care about his or her feelings, you open the door to what Sue Johnson calls a Hold Me Tight conversation. And when you can shape this kind of connection,  research says that you can heal hurts and create a love that lasts.

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hold-me-tight/201002/fighting-fair-who-can-do-it

Tips For Your First Year of Marriage (and beyond)

Whether you are engaged or have recently gotten married, congratulations are in order!  This time of your life can be very exciting.  Somewhere along the way of engagement to wedding planning to honeymooning, it is very important that you take time to discuss and prepare for the most important thing – your marriage.  The following tips will help you and your fiance or spouse to discuss the future ahead.

Differences can be a good thing! You and your partner are and will always be individuals.  Some people fear losing themselves or their identity once they are married.  It is natural that you and your partner have differences and will continue to have differences even after marriage – different ways to address conflict, different ways of communicating, different expectations, and more.  Marriage may change some things, but it won’t change who you are as individuals.  Celebrate the unique qualities each of you brings to the relationship and consider how these differences can work as complements instead.

Conflict is normal! You two will not agree all the time.  In the first year of marriage and beyond, you are likely to hit many rough patches.  What is important is how you deal with such challenges.  Through working through conflicts and rough patches, we learn to repair and often grow to become more mature.  Consider viewing conflict as an opportunity to grow together and mature in your marriage.  It is important to learn how to fight fair; to not make assumptions about what your partner is thinking or feeling; to actively listen to what your partner is saying; to repeat back what you hear your partner saying to be sure that you are understanding each other; and to communicate your thoughts in a constructive way.  Avoid words such as “always” and “never” and eliminate placing blame on your partner.  Consider and communicate your contribution to the problem at hand rather than focusing on your partner’s contribution alone.  Attending couples counseling or couples classes in your area can assist in learning these important and necessary skills.

Have regular date nights! Dating doesn’t end because you say “I do”.  It is crucial to the relationship to spend quality one-on-one time with your fiance or spouse on a regular basis.  Be sure to protect the fun and friendship you want to experience on these date nights by leaving stressful decisions and discussions at the door.  Cooking a new meal together while listening to music may not be the right time to bring up which family home you should go to for Thanksgiving.  Simply enjoy each other and focus on highlighting the romance.

Spend some time alone! This balancing act is an important one.  Finding a way to strike a balance between time together and time apart can strengthen your marriage over time.  Each of us needs to pursue our own hobbies and interests or time with friends for the health of the relationship.

Negotiate! When you have spent much of your adult life making individual decisions and doing what you want when you want to do it, it can be a bit of a challenge to learn to give and take.  If you and your fiance or spouse are not on the same page with respect to things like living arrangements, finances, or parenting, take some time to understand each other’s expectations.  Often there are very valid underlying concerns behind the positions we hold on to.

Explore myths of marriage! We all have grown up hearing terms such as “happily ever after” and “soul mate”.  Understand that marriage is a beautiful thing and takes a lot of effort and commitment every day.   Discuss with each other what your expectations are for your relationship and marriage.  Ask yourselves: What do I expect the marriage to look like? (be specific).  Then consider whether the expectations you have are realistic.  I often invite couples to imagine if we could videotape their marriage at different times in the future and then we watched the tape, what would we see?

It will take a daily effort and a strong commitment to maintain and strengthen the bond of such a relationship within the first year and beyond. An effort worth doing as your marriage will be the most significant relationship in your life.

One Sentence a Day!

In my experience, in working with couples at all stages of their relationships, I often hear one partner or another say that they think positive things about their partner at any given time.  One young man says that he often thinks about his wife while he is at the office, wonders what she is doing and hopes she is enjoying her day.  When I ask how they let their partner know their thoughts, they tend to look at me with a puzzled look and say, “I don’t think I ever told my partner that I was thinking such thoughts.”

According to John Gottman, a well-known researcher and clinician in the field of couples counseling and author of “Why marriages succeed or fail”, has found that healthy couples have a ratio of 5 positive interactions to every 1 negative interaction.  Other researchers have suggested up to 20 positive interactions are needed to every 1 negative interaction for a healthy relationship.  I have found that we cannot always take away the negative interactions or replace them in therapy as quickly as one might want, but what we can do, to start, is implement more positives.  I recommend that my clients take inventory daily of their partner’s attempts at positive interactions and repair moments, and then let them know that you noticed.  For if nobody noticed the good things are we are doing to enhance our relationship, why would we keep doing them? 

Having a rule of saying one positive sentence to your partner a day is a simple way to start to enhance the relationship.  One statement I like to recommend to clients comes from PREP, the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program and it goes like this:

“When you did X in Y situation, I felt Z.” 

 I often extend the statement to include:

 ”When you did or said X in Y situation, I felt or experienced Z.” 

Now all you have to do is fill in the appropriate words for X, Y, & Z.  For example, one could say to their partner, “When you listened to my concerns about my day at work last night, I felt heard, respected, and validated.” Or, “when you emptied the dishwasher on Monday without me suggesting that it be done, I really felt as though we are a team, thank you.”  And, it never hurts to add a few words of appreciation such as “Thank you”. 

This type of statement helps the speaker to communicate the specifics of the event and how it made him/her feel.  It also lets the listener know what he or she did specifically that led to a positive outcome and may help him/her gain insight into his/her partner’s needs for future interactions.  I believe that telling our partner one positive sentence a day is really a great way to enhance connection and to foster positive interactions.  It feels good to receive a positive statement from someone we love and it also feels good to say it. 

Furthermore, this rule of saying one positive sentence a day, forces us to slow down from the stressors of our world and to start paying attention to the positive moments, the repair moments in our love lives that might otherwise pass us by.  If we have time to update our Facebook status with one sentence daily, there is no reason why we cannot update our relationship by sharing one positive sentence a day with the ones we love.  You can also try this statement with children now that school is in session, or with friends, co-workers, and others with whom we have relationships.  And who knows, one sentence a day, may help keep the problems away!

The New Divorce: A Friendly One

Imagine that.  A friendly divorce.  Is there such a thing?  Do you know of anyone who has accomplished a friendly divorce, aside from maybe Demi Moore and Bruce Willis?  Maybe you, yourself, have been able to create a friendly, amicable divorce.  This new divorce may be a rising trend and it is important that professionals such as myself and the clients I work with are knowledgeable on what it takes to create such a new kind of divorce. 

Traditional divorces may be something of the past and I am excited that USAToday has made this topic into a story.  According to a USAToday article entitled For more couples, divorce can be on more friendly terms, written by Karina Bland, some of today’s couples who have decided to call it quits, have also decided to do things differently than those they have witnessed in the past.    The article states that more and more couples are seeking to create a friendly divorce through accessing services such as divorce mediation, collaboration, or do-it-yourself kits.   These proactive and responsible couples also tend to be those with children. 

In my practice when working with divorcing couples, I often strongly recommend going the path of divorce mediation or collaboration.  Not only does mediation help these couples to save time and money, but it also increases the chances that they may actually be friendly with one another.   The traditional style of divorcing usually involves lawyers on either end fighting for the best deal for their client.    This type of environment not only can promote disagreements around a number of signicant matters, but it can also create a situation in which neither partner walks away feeling satisfied.

The author of the article educates on the differences between a traditional and a friendly divorce in stating, “Mediation is one kind of a friendly divorce. Collaboration is another, in which both parties retain their own attorneys but also use experts and work together for a solution for everyone. Couples don’t set foot in court in either instance. Proponents say it reduces the emotional costs on everyone; both children and adults start their new lives on relatively stable ground.”

In today’s economy, some couples simply cannot afford to divorce.   A traditional divorce can cost anywhere from $15,000-$25,000 and can stretch out for months or even years.   

So what exactly does a friendly divorce look like?  Well, for starters, “this new kind of divorced mom and dad might attend parent-teacher conferences together, work jointly to get one kid to Little League and the other to piano lessons — even if it’s not technically their visitation day — and share calendars electronically so Dad can arrange to take the kids when mom’s out of town on business”.

Whenever children are involved in a divorce, you must keep coming back to, “What is in the best interest on our child(ren).”  A divorce is not so much about you as it is about your children.  A friendly divorce option means getting to a more humane, mature, and responsible way of handling such a life decision.   You may be choosing to no longer be spouses, but you will always be co-parents.  I say, let’s work to create more friendly divorces if we cannot always save the marriage.

Two Become Better

Having grown up in the Christian faith and attending many Christian marriage ceremonies, I learned about marriage as a sacrement.  I learned to view marriage as a blessed sacrament in which two individuals become united as one.  Even from a young age, I remember thinking about  the concept and practice of two individuals being one in marriage to understand what this really means. 

For a long time, I have held the belief that not only do two becoming one but, two must become better.

According to Arthur Aron, a psychologist and relationship researcher at Stony Brook University, my belief system in that two actually become better is what he calls self-expansion.  He has found that a partner’s level of commitment depends largely on how much his or her partner enhances his or her life and broadens his or her horizons.

To measure this quality,you may want to ask yourself these questions:

•  How much does your partner provide a source of exciting experiences?
•  How much has knowing your partner made you a better person?
•  How much do you see your partner as a way to expand your own capabilities?

Further, it may be important to ask yourself:

•  Are you putting in the efforts to provide a source of exciting experiences for your partner?
• Do you see yourself as working to expand your partner’s capabilities?

Couples who make the effort to do new and challenging activities and then experience some feelings of victory for tackling such challenges together, often have greater love and relationship satisfaction.  In other words, couples who try new activities, explore new places, and experience new adventures will experience self-expansion, thereby increasing their level of commitment to each other. 

“We enter relationships because the other person becomes part of ourselves, and that expands us,” Dr. Aron said. “That’s why people who fall in love stay up all night talking and it feels really exciting. We think couples can get some of that back by doing challenging and exciting things together.” *

One fun activity for couples to try in order to implement this increase in new, exciting adventures together is to each create a wish list.  Each of you writes on an index card, three things you would like your partner to do more of, either with you or for you.  Then swap cards and take turns implementing each other’s wishes on the index cards.  By taking turns, you get to see how your partner interprets your items and surprises you by picking any of the three to plan and implement. 

*Parker-Pope, Tara, 2010.  “The science of a happy marriage”  The New York Times, May 10

Welcome!

Hello! I am Erin, and this blog is about me and my life as a woman, a wife, and a therapist, as well as my desire to share knowledge, research, and advice related to my work as a marriage and family therapist.

To get to know me a little better, I can say that I grew up in the small town of Norwalk, Connecticut and attended Catholic school for most of my life.  (Though I consider myself a bit of a recovering Catholic at the moment.) I was a dancer from the age of 4 and through my years in college at Fordham University and the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. I also taught dance lessons to children and pre-teens to help pay for college. Dancing was my passion and I dreamed of being a star on Broadway.

Today, a few of my passions are my relationship with my husband and my work as a therapist. For me, there is something significant about creating and maintaining a successful, happy, and healthy relationship. I suppose that is not all that unsual as many of us want that. Which is part of the reason I chose to become a marriage and family therapist. Relationships can be complicated and I want to help people to feel empowered (with the skills to back it up) that they can succeed at having the healthy, happy, and successful relationship that they have always wanted, without sacrificing who they truly are as individuals.

I believe that nowhere do we really learn the skills to have a healthy, happy, successfuly, long-term relationship.  I view my job as a therapist as not only as someone who counsels others, but also as someone who teaches and educates.  I also know that wearing so many hats, as most of us do on a daily basis, can be challenging to our personal happiness and relationship happiness. And where do we turn to get support for our challenges, our feelings of being overwhelmed with all that we take on in today’s world? Where do our young adults turn to get the support and guidance they so truly need at this stage of their lives? I am passionate to be one person in the lives of these individuals, couples, and families, both young and old, who can offer support, guidance, and an alternative path to a happier and more fulfulling life. To learn more, see www.erinmorey.com.

I will be blogging here to continue offering support and guidance wherever I can. I hope you find this blog valuable and let me know if there are topics you want to read about and I will be happy to respond.