Longevity in relationships slips so easily through our fingers, it’s not a simple or small achievement, unless one partner is almost always submissive & not resentful about their wants being ignored. Two adults who are equal in sharing power over priorities, values & decision making have to be involved in constant work together over the decades. This requires partners have imagination, attention & gumption.
Imagination about someone else’s point of view is hard to do because we all fall in love with our own point of view. Yet we have to learn how to do that, especially when we are upset. It’s so easy to nurse the victim that lies inside of each of us. The world can be a harsh place & throwing ourselves a pity party is an ordinary activity; but you need to have a time limit on being a victim. You have to imagine that both points of view have merit.
It’s so much easier to feel persecuted & blame your partner, but being a partner means having some imagination about how you contributed to the problem or how your point of view may need reworking. You need imagination to come up with ideas to start on a path of repair instead of “Woe is me.” Repair is just not a word we hear often enough when it comes to relationships & yet the path of making amends & new behavior changes is crucial to survival.
Consider how just looking up on the internet how to diagnose your partner is so much easier than looking at yourself. Deciding someone is narcissistic makes it easy to build walls. I respect that even after almost 50 years of working with people, I don’t make a casual diagnosis or consider it an online activity. The urge to diagnose feels as if it’s an activity to let yourself off the hook. If you insist on doing it balance the picture with a clear portrait of your own problems, because it takes two.
It takes imagination to move from hopeless to hopeful about the future. Many relationship problems are about growing pains, learning how to accommodate the differences. Love often begins with a lovely, blissful bubble of agreement. At some point the reality of disagreement comes into play. So many families squelch disagreement & so people grow up with no idea of how to manage it.
Learning how to conflict with respect works so much better when you can imagine the other person’s point of view.The fantastic Japanese Film director Kurosawa made the film Rashoman in 1950 about 4 different versions about the story of a murder. This may help you recognize that truth lies in between people & no one person has truth locked in. I spend my work life in between people & so easily see validity to both sides.
I think it’s imagination about the middle ground, the space in between two people where solutions to problems can develop & grow. The middle ground is really important because it gives breathing room to TWO points of view. The middle ground is precious & the more time a couple spends there the better off they will be.
I also believe it takes imagination to take risks & try new things as a couple besides the usual going out to dinner & a movie. The brain loves novelty & it takes imagination to experiment & try something new together like rock climbing or salsa dance lessons to have a greater connection. My next episode #105 will be an interview about trying art or theater as a connection.
It can take imagination to give someone you love the benefit of the doubt. Generosity towards your partner can go a long way to get over feeling emotionally bruised. We tend to spill over onto those who are nearest & dearest.
I also suggest some imagination about your partner’s particular burden of pain. Did a parent die when they were young, were they sexually abused, did they have a mentally ill sibling? Imagine what it would be like & how those events might make trust more difficult. Imagination can help create greater understanding of someone else.
Imagination is a skill that can be improved. Reading fiction is a great way to live in a different time & walk in someone else’s shoes. I recently read a book where I learned hoop skirts in the 1850’s often weighed 37 pounds & imagined what a terrible burden that was before bloomers. Recently I’ve read two novels that helped me consider generational differences. On the website therapyideas.net I have a reading Books for pleasure page because that’s how important reading is to me.
Now let’s delve into attention. It’s too easy to start taking each other for granted over the years. So it’s important to continue to pay attention to your partner. Making assumptions short circuits paying attention. With so many different things tugging at us to pay attention it is easy to take short cuts. This is why having kids under the age of 5 who need a lot makes it easy to neglect the two of you as a couple.
One of the ways to pay attention to your partner is to be curious…..what we do more often is take the easy route of criticism instead. If you can stay curious over the years you will have greater success at relationship longevity. Find out if there is a longer story that would add to your understanding of where your partner is coming from.
It’s shocking to me how many couples stop paying attention to sex. In 2018 25% of Americans reported having no sex at all in the past year. Only 39% reported having sex once a week. Sex is an important way to share pleasure. People need to talk to each other about what to do to improve their sex life. Silence about sex too often leads to celibacy.
I was encouraged to learn that young couples are more concerned about putting money matters on the table before marriage. Money is too often ignored & yet is is one of the big problems in relationships. In episode #78 I interviewed a financial therapist with excellent advice. 41% of Gen Xers divorced over money. So it really is important to pay attention to financial priorities & talk a lot especially if you are living above your means.
Attention is the way we nurture our relationships…..One way would be looking into the 5 love languages by Gary Chapman developed in 1992 which is all about paying more attention. You can take a test & find out which of these is your love language; acts of service, gifts, physical touch, quality time or words of affirmation. This helps you think about what your partner most appreciates that may not be easy to give….and you decide to get better at it because it’s important to your partner.
My therapist Sonia Nevis said that restaurants were made for people to talk to each other while they waited for the food to come. Now I look at all the couples bent over their phones & it makes me sigh. Texting is also being mistaken for paying attention which is simply not true. Attention can take 20-45 conversations when something is major issue & certainly more than one conversation over something medium sized. Texting is merely a short cut, real substance or depth is not possible. Skimming the surface, keeping things superficial appears to be “safer”, but you miss out on truly knowing each other which is more messy.
When my husband comes upstairs I close my book or turn off the TV, both are easy enough to return to….I’m interested in talking with him. I shift my focus, I don’t try to do two things poorly at once. I am clearly paying attention which demonstrates I value our conversation.
It’s important to pay attention to disagreement. On TV it’s easy to see the families where disagreement is not tolerated. Any healthy relationship allows room for disagreement. It’s important to pay attention to the things that are hard to talk about, my number one piece of advice to any couple that truly wants to stay together.
Paying attention to emotions, trying to identify them to share really increases intimacy because you are able to be more vulnerable. Many men struggle with identifying their emotions which I did an interview on in Episode #99. I will remind my audience there is a 2 page vocabulary list on the emotions page which can be printed out & used in the next conversation with your partner.
Attention demands that you balance your own needs with those of your partner & the needs of the relationship. Watching George & Tammy on showtime was painful because George Jones has his full attention on alcohol & he is drunk with the attention he gets from his audience. As much as he loved Tammy Wynette she came in a distant third & George’s actions spoke louder than all his words & apologies. He really wanted to be loved no matter what and that is a danger sign not a romantic request. Unconditional love is for children. Grown ups who love decide to be better people. I’m going to say that again because it is such a crucial truth to live by.
Attention demands careful listening to your partner. You know when someone is not listening & you shorten what you were about to share. When someone is really paying attention you share more & the result is a more interesting conversation. So I want to share two quotes from an essay in the NYT Jan. 9th, 2020 Lessons in the Lost Art of Listening: Listening“involves paying attention to how they say it & what they do while they are saying it, in what context, and how what they say resonates within you.” The author Kate Murphy ends with “We are, each of us, the sum of what we attend to in life. And to listen poorly, selectively or not at all limits your understanding of the world and prevents you from becoming the best you can be.
I remember paying attention to my husband when we were young & knowing he was deeply unhappy in his job. I persuaded him to become self employed & take the risk to journey to Pittsburgh in 1975, a place we could not afford to visit until the week before we moved in & the truck was packed, ready to go the very next weekend. It was one of the best risks of our lives while we knew no one & had never been there until apartment hunting the weekend before, despite his parent’s objections.
That story brings me to the third subject, gumption. Such an old fashioned word. The definition is spirited initiative & resourcefulness. We had the gumption to take a huge leap into the unknown…facing uncertainty & going forward is really important and taking risks together fuels your connection with each other. Sharing your fears adds to the bond of vulnerability which builds intimacy.
It takes gumption to face hard truths & be authentic about what matters to you especially when it may not be appreciated by your partner. It takes gumption to ask hard questions: Why don’t we have sex? Why are we borrowing money to go on vacation? Why aren’t we visiting my friends or my parents? It takes hard work to step towards pain & be honest about what’s missing.
It takes gumption not be discouraged when your relationship hits the normal developmental 6-10 year OMG “what are we even doing together” crisis in marriage; that can be turned into an opportunity to decide to work on improving the relationship instead of just complaining. Complaining is so easy & when complaining is an ordinary pattern it can too easily grow into contempt. Remember the brain was built to have a negativity bias to save us from tigers & you don’t want to indulge in a pattern of casual negativity about your relationship in your own head or with the neighbors.
It takes gumption not to avoid & deflect problems, so many people are terrified of conflict & allow their fears to be in charge staying silent & not dealing. It takes gumption to face your fears & risk conflict. It takes gumption to stay respectful and not hide behind a wall of defensiveness.
It takes gumption to face reality and to be interested in someone else’s reality. Reality is always in between people & holding your version of reality quietly next to your partner’s completely different version of reality is not a small endeavor. We live in a world that sadly enough fights for a false reality over facts & science. Think & remember feelings are not facts. Think about what evidence or facts support you & what supports their point of view?
It takes gumption to explore instead of allowing your world to shrink. When was the last time the two of you tried something new? Take dance lessons, sign up for a class, go to banjo nite at the Eagles, try a different kind of music or pop into an art gallery together.
What made me think about gumption was reading the British author Rachel Joyce & her characters really have gumption in Miss Benson’s Beetle & one of my all time favorite books The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold FryThey are about ordinary people going after dreams & are very inspiring.
My challenge for you today:
Can you pick something that is hard for you to understand about your partner & then try
to imagine more about why it is important to them?
What is one way you are good at paying attention to your partner?
What is one way you could improve paying attention to something that is important to them, but not to you?
Next time you go to a restaurant put the phone away & look at each other & talk.
If you had more gumption what would you do differently?
What difficult topics are you willing to bring up to your partner?
You could read the author, Rachel Joyce, you won’t regret it.
Follow me on Instagram @rhodaoncouples. My podcast is in the top 1% globally thanks to you listening! I’m proud to still be doing this more than 7 years like wikipedia providing knowledge in the public interest & I don’t make a dime. Consider buying my children’s book on Amazon Dancing With Your Lizard Brain.
