The 10 Habits of Happy Couples

Tips for Talking Openly and Tuning In “Being a good listener is one of the most important and enchanting life skills anyone can have, yet few of us know how to do it. Not because we are evil, but because no one has taught us how.” Alain de Botton Relationship Habits can be learned Remember that one of the main messages of this book is to believe you have the ability to learn any relationship skills you need in order to make things better. Everyone - no matter what they learned growing up, or what they bring from previous relationships, their gender or their sexual orientation - can learn the relationship skills in this book. When we focus on progress over perfection we know to expect set-backs, have reasonable expectations with how quickly we will improve, and focus on taking emotional risks. With these values operating in the background we can grow our skills. Trust that your partner is a safe haven If you want to be trusted by your partner, you need to trust them as well. The most important way to show trust is by taking the risk to open up about your own feelings and thoughts with your partner. This can be difficult to do if there if you do not feel safe in your relationship environment. Emotions make us feel so vulnerable, and many of us are uncomfortable being vulnerable. If this is the case, then perhaps your first topic to discuss is the safety, or lack of safety, you feel. Start with being receptive to the idea of establishing a sense of trust and safety first so that both of you can take risks and truly open up to each other. But even after you get a sense of being safe with your partner, it will still be challenging, because growth comes through taking risks and can be painful at times. If you don't take the risk to show your vulnerability when it is safe, you will never achieve a deeper level of connection and trust with your partner. It is just not accomplished any other way. It has to start here. Take the risks for you and for your relationship. And if this is too hard to do on your own, get help with a couples therapist to guide you in this crucial habit. Practice managing your vulnerability Part of being in a loving, securely attached relationship is pulling your weight when it comes to being honest and open. This behavior can be learned to the point where it becomes a habit. Part of getting constant practice is learning how to manage your way through the vulnerable moments. Those are the moments where you feel like bailing, but you end up staying and working through it. This may require taking some deep breaths, trusting your partner, and seeing the value of trying something different than what you are used to. You can think about the moment you might feeling like bailing as pushing the ‘panic button’. When the heat gets too high some of us hit the panic button and bolt. We might not physically bolt, but we flee emotionally and disconnect. Part of taking risks is sensing that you want to press the panic button, but not pressing it. Instead of pressing it you stay just a little bit longer to see what happens. Once you stay a little bit longer, for four or five occasions you will notice that you can stick with your emotional world a bit longer on average. This is building the habit of emotional vulnerability. Tune into yourself and share your softer, core emotions When you are trying to establish a stronger connection with your partner, remember that we have to start with tuning into our own softer feelings first. Quiet yourself and bring your attention to the feelings that lie underneath the sharper ones that you felt when you were triggered. Our vulnerable emotions are often around a fear of rejection, judgment or abandonment, pain and sometimes shame. They can feel old and dangerous. But they are sort of the like the wizard from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ - once you pull the curtain back on them they are often less dangerous than they appeared. Track the ‘felt sense’ in your body Some of us have a more difficult time figuring out the softer emotions. If you can’t put your finger on what you are feeling that is okay and expected. Vague feelings or contradictory feelings are what bring people into therapy - so it is a common experience in life. Tap into the vague sense and determine where it resides in your body. Once you learn that, work to find a word for it. Pinpointing where it is in your body can be your starting point, and you can flush out the feeling after that. Often we find that sense in our belly, chest, neck or head. Tune into those parts of the body and see if you get a sense for some discomfort. If so, track it’s shape, texture, and size. Once you get that sense, try and name it. You don’t have to get the word right in the first try. It sometimes takes several tries to get a word that seems to fit. Once you get a word, try to attach an emotion to word. For example, clients often get a sense of a ball in the pit of their stomach. This ball can be two or three inches in diameter and thick. A word that might pop up is ‘stuck’, ‘heavy’ or ‘old’. Once you get this descriptive word we try to attach an emotional word to this one. You can ask, “When I get this sense of stuck I usually feel ____.” Getting an emotional word is very important since emotions are a window to our needs, we can determine what we need. Identifying our needs is crucial for conversations with our partners. Another strategy for people who have a hard time figuring out the softer emotion behind annoyance, frustration, anger or numbness is to use the body’s pressure points to release the emotion. This is a body/mind approach called ‘Emotional Freedom Technique’, or EFT developed by Stanford-trained engineer and ordained minister Gary Craig (this technique should not to be confused with the EFT, or Emotionally Focused Therapy, that we practice as therapists). In Emotional Freedom Technique you can tap on different pressure points of your body as you process your emotions. In this EFT the physical and emotional are intertwined. There are plenty of tutorial videos on how to do this and you can always find a therapist who specializes in this approach. For more info on this go to https://www.emofree.com/ Identify what you need from your partner After getting in touch with your deeper, softer emotion, ask yourself “What am I longing for from my partner?” Being able to identify what you need from your partner will allow them to do their part - which is to do their best to meet your needs. Sharing your emotions and needs can allow you to become more accessible and real to your partner. And this will allow them to be able to tune into you more and offer you the assurance that can help you feel better. And being specific about your needs will be important to your partner. You can’t expect them to read your mind or always know how to meet your needs. The better you understand them (remember that your emotions are a window to your needs) the better you can tell your partner what they are. Take the risk to share your vulnerable feelings with your partner Sharing the results after tuning into your emotional world with your partner is THE most important piece of this puzzle. You have the fully commit to the sharing piece. Otherwise you just obtain more awareness for yourself but you partner will still have a Blind Spot and not understand something about you. It’ll be something you know that they don’t (Quadrant #3). By not sharing what you learned you will deprive the relationship from an opportunity for growth and the possibility of deepening the connection. And at the same time you could make the relationship more vulnerable to negative interactions due to a lack of understanding and the Blind Spot.