Could one communication technique improve your relationship a lot? Sarah Lang looks into The Gottman Method
Auckland lawyer Kate*, 39, and her husband of eight years used to talk a lot about a lot of things – even, sometimes, on the phone during their lunch breaks. But as they tried to fit demanding careers around parenting their (now school-age) daughters, the couple no longer talked about much other than practical matters, such as who’s cooking dinner or what’s new on Netflix.
“We’d usually ask each other if we’d had a good day. But I’m not that interested in his field of work, so I tended to say ‘uh-huh’ and turn back to whatever I was doing. Then I realised that not having proper conversations was having a negative impact, as though we were almost checking out of each other’s lives in some ways.”
Ask relationship experts what small but important things you can do to strengthen your relationship, and many mention this notion: ‘turn toward’. Basically, it involves a willingness to listen and respond to your partner in a way that shows they’re important to you.
What Is The Gottman Method?
The life work of clinical psychologists, researchers, and couple Drs John and Julie Gottman culminated in The Gottman Method. The approach harnesses decades of leading research on marriage (and long-term relationships) to create practical tools couples can use. The Gottman Institute’s website Gottman.com offers many resources – and 55,000 therapists worldwide are trained in Gottman Method Couples Therapy.
Zach Brittle, a certified Gottman Therapist, best-selling author of The Relationship Alphabet and host of popular podcast Marriage Therapy Radio, has written a piece on gottman.com called ‘Turn Towards Instead of Away’.
He writes that “Dr John Gottman conducted a study with newlyweds, then followed up with them six years later. Many of the couples remained together. Many divorced. The couples that stayed married were much better at one thing: the third level of the Sound Relationship House: Turn Towards Instead of Away. (A Sound Relationship House is a metaphor for a relationship that has good foundations and plumbing etc.) “At the six-year follow-up, couples that stayed married turned towards one another 86% of the time. Couples that divorced averaged only 33% of the time.”
“This is a pretty incredible piece of data. It suggests that there is something you can do today that will dramatically change the course of your relationship. More importantly, it suggests that there is something that you cannot do that will lead to its demise.”
Making Bids For Connection
As Zach writes, “in order to understand turning, you have to first understand bids. A bid is any attempt from one partner to another for attention, affirmation, affection, or any other positive connection. Bids show up in simple ways, a smile or wink, and more complex ways, like a request for advice or help. In general, women make more bids than men, but in the healthiest relationships, both partners are comfortable making all kinds of bids.”
“The success of your relationship often depends on whether you turn towards them, blank them or turn against them.”
In her book The Good Partner, psychologist Dr Karen Nimmo draws from the Gottmans’ work to describe a person’s efforts for attention, affection or acceptance as ‘bids for connection’. These might be physical or verbal, such as a question, touch, text message or comment. “The success of your relationship often depends on whether you turn towards them, blank them or turn against them,” she writes. Turning toward is when you “listen and absorb what’s going on, and respond appropriately and lovingly”.
And turning away? “I call this blanking. Not (or barely) responding to your partner’s bids. For example, nodding vaguely or grunting…. If you do this often, you’ll send back the message that your partner isn’t interesting/important enough to you.”
Then there’s ‘turning against’. As Karen explains, this is “responding negatively… responding in a dismissive, critical, sarcastic or hurtful way. This has clear, and negative, implications for the future of any relationship”.
Of course, it’s not always a good time to talk. “Unless you’re super-human,” Karen says, “you won’t consistently turn towards your partner. We all get distracted, immersed in our own stuff or caught in our own heads. But it’s worth thinking about how often you blank your partner with your vagueness. Or if you snap or criticise them when they don’t deserve it.”
“The key thing is to be aware – notice – when your partner is trying to connect with you. Even bringing your attention to it can foster better communication. And responding with kindness – or conveying interest – is balm for your relationship. Try not to multi-task when your partner’s talking. Look at them.” And of course, respond.
How To Turn Towards Your Partner
We’ve all been in this kind of scenario: your partner tells you about something – perhaps about their boss, perhaps about a news story. But you’re busy, or distracted, or aren’t interested in the topic, or are ‘over’ the topic, so you may just respond ‘oh’ or ‘huh’, signalling you’re not up for a conversation.
How might this go differently? If, for instance, your partner says ‘my boss is driving me nuts’, you might say ‘Oh, what is she doing now?’. If you’re in the middle of something else that requires your attention, you might say, ‘Hey right now I’m doing X, so how about we talk about your boss tomorrow?’. Even better, schedule a time – perhaps block out half an hour one evening a week, or have a weekly lunch date.
If this seems demanding or overwhelming, don’t try to do all this at once. Just being aware of the concept can help.
Kate read up on the idea of ‘turning toward’, then got her husband on board. “Now if he wants to talk about something, I’ll do my best to stop and listen, and vice versa. If one of us is too busy or tired, we express that, suggest a time to talk about it, then make sure we have that conversation. It takes work, but it’s already improved our relationship.”
