The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships

by John Gottman

  But if you want to build solid, long-term relationships, you’ve got to be willing to turn toward each other’s bids in all sorts of circumstances. That’s why marriage vows include phrases like “for better or worse.” That’s why people shun the idea of a “fair-weather friend.” We long for relationships with people who will stick by us even when we’re tired, crabby, fearful, depressed, or frustrated.

  Remember, our research shows that the less people turn toward one another, the less satisfying their relationships are.

  People can turn toward, turn away, or turn against all sorts of bids for connection—even those bids that appear hostile or off-putting. Take a look at the examples in the chart on this page. As you read these responses, you may think turning toward is a great ideal to strive for, but it would be impossible to do all the time, especially given all the pressures so many of us face. True, we all face competing demands: the coworker who could use your ear at exactly the same time you’re supposed to pick your kids up from the baby-sitter; the sister who calls with a marital crisis just as you’re leaving for that long-planned romantic weekend. Nobody has the emotional stamina to turn toward other people’s needs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  Realizing the limits of our time and attention, I’m reminded of a story told by a couple who participated in one of our research studies. Although they described their marriage as happy, they experienced some stress after the birth of their second child.

  “One day I was lying in bed,” says Allen, “and I realized that there were two people between me and Becca. Literally two whole bodies—our two-year-old and our newborn. And that made me really depressed. I missed Becca. I just wasn’t getting enough of her.”

  A few days later, when he and Becca were sitting on the couch with the kids, she asked, “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m having a pity party,” Allen confessed. “I feel like you and I never do anything together anymore—just the two of us. You’re always busy with the kids. I can’t seem to get any of your attention.”

  How did Becca react? “I blew up!” she recalls. “Here I was with one little kid crawling all over me and this infant hanging on my teat. Then I’ve got this other big baby telling me I’m not paying enough attention to his needs! It really made me angry. I told him, ‘I can’t deal with this situation, either. You’ve got to do something about it!’”

  What did Allen do? “He was great,” Becca says. “He got up off the couch and he took the two-year-old to the park. And it wasn’t just that afternoon. He did the same thing every day for the next month. They went to the zoo, the aquarium, McDonald’s. Everywhere. And I finally got to spend some time alone with the baby, which is what I really needed. For the first time since he was born, I started to relax.”

  As for Allen’s needs: “It took a few weeks,” says Becca, “but after a while I was able to say, ‘Okay, let’s get back to your pity party. What can we do about your feelings?’”

  “Waiting awhile was fine,” Allen explains. “What’s important is that Becca came through. She always does.”

  The point of the story is that Allen had a valid need to connect with Becca and he stated his bid in the gentlest of ways. But Becca was in no position to turn toward his bid at that time. In fact, she not only turned against his bid—she upped the ante by demanding that he do something for her instead! Still, everything worked out, and here’s why: Allen and Becca had a long history of turning toward one another. That history gave them the confidence to ride out the crisis, knowing that eventually they’d get back to even ground.

  My advice, then, is this: If you want to build a deeper emotional connection with somebody, turn toward that person as often as you can. This will vary, of course, depending on how comfortable each of you feels with the level of independence and intimacy in your relationship. You typically have more chances to turn toward your child than toward a work colleague, for example. And opportunities for turning toward a spouse are usually more abundant than for turning toward an adult sibling. But in general, if you can turn toward any significant person in your life—even when you’re angry, frustrated, complaining, or sad—your relationship will grow stronger. Then, if you face a time when turning toward one another is impossible, the goodwill you’ve accumulated will be enough to see you through to better times.

  For adult-child relationships, keep in mind that children are often less reciprocal than adults, and that’s natural for their stage of emotional development. In other words, parents and teachers may feel that they’re doing all the turning toward and that the child is giving little back. My advice is to be patient and keep responding positively to the child’s bids for attention, because it will pay off in the long run. Your consistent response tells the child that you can be trusted. It also serves as an important model for positive relationship-building. Over time, the child will begin turning toward you more often.

  Also, make it a point to turn toward people with fun-loving, high-energy responses when you can—responses that include kidding, affection, and humor. Our studies show that this type of enthusiastic, positive response has an impact on people’s ability to access humor during conflict situations. When you regularly feel enthusiastic support and affection from somebody, you’re more comfortable cracking lighthearted jokes in the midst of arguments with them. And humor is key to unlocking even more interest, affection, support, and empathy in relationships.

  Choosing to Turn Away from Bids for Connection

  Turning away is what happens when you fail to pay attention to another’s bid for attention.

  Turning away typically occurs in one of three different ways:

  • Preoccupied responses, in which the respondent is often involved in an activity, such as reading or watching television. Here are some examples:

  WORKER: Excuse me, Mr. Brady. I was wondering if we might talk about…

  BOSS: (Staring at his computer, and waving his hand in the air as if to say, “Not now.”)

  MOM: Hey, you guys…dinner’s ready.

  CHILDREN: (Staring at the television, motionless. No response.)

  HUSBAND: (Wraps arms around her waist. Kisses her amorously on the neck.)

  WIFE: (Pushes him away. Continues to make the family’s sack lunches.)

  FRIEND A: It says here that interest rates are going up.

  FRIEND B: (Reading the paper; no response.)

  • Disregarding responses, in which the bid is completely ignored or the would-be respondent focuses on insignificant details of the bid.

  FORMER HUSBAND: We need to talk about Megan’s spring break. Is she going to spend it with me or with you?

  FORMER WIFE: (Silence.)

  LOVER A: It’s my great-grandmother’s wedding ring. I thought you’d really like it.

  LOVER B: (Silence.)

  MOM: What do you want for dinner—tuna noodle casserole or tofu patty melts?

  CHILD: (Silence.)

  WORKER A: I need some volunteers for the cleanup committee. Anyone?

  WORKERS B, C, AND D: (Silence.)

  FRIEND A: What did you think of my manuscript?

  FRIEND B: I like the way you double-spaced the pages.

  • Interrupting responses, in which the respondent introduces unrelated matters or counterbids:

  DAD: Who’s going to say grace tonight?

  CHILD: Pass the salt.

  CUSTOMER: I am really upset about the way you handled my account.

  SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: We’ve been so busy this month.

  CHILD: Dad, Barney got out of his pen. I can’t find him anywhere!

  DAD: Look at your shoes! You’re tracking mud all over the house.

  WORKER A: Who’s going to respond to the complaints I’m getting from Customer Service?

  WORKER B: Let’s set a time for the next staff meeting, shall we?

  WIFE: What a beautiful sunset!

  HUSBAND: Did my sister ever call?

  When people turn away from one another, it raises
the question: Are they being intentionally disregarding, or are they simply being “mindless”? Our research shows that it’s usually the latter. People rarely intend to be malicious or mean-spirited when they turn away. Rather, they’re operating on “automatic pilot,” unaware of how their behavior is affecting those around them. Perpetually late for appointments, the harried manager rushes into the office each morning without greeting his staff. After several months of this, the staff begins to feel that he doesn’t care about them at all. Preoccupied with friends and school, the busy teen rarely stops to chat with her parents about anything other than her allowance or borrowing the car. So, unless her parents are astute enough to make her slow down for connection, they may find their daughter drifting further and further away from the family.

  Problems of mindlessness can usually be remedied if people become more conscious of their interactions, a topic we cover in more detail in chapter 3.

  But sometimes people are turning away for a reason: Consciously or unconsciously, they want to gain more autonomy in a relationship. In these cases, turning away helps us to regulate the balance between freedom and interdependence, an important task in any relationship, including those between friends, lovers, family members, or coworkers. It’s usually best to aim for a level that’s comfortable for both people in the relationship, and finding this balance can take some time. Also, the balance may change over time as we grow and change. Expectations get out of balance, with one person wanting consistently to connect while the other consistently turns away.

  If you find yourself in a relationship where either one of you is regularly turning away, look carefully at your intentions. If both of you are committed to having a close relationship, you can take steps toward becoming more aware of each other’s needs so you can turn toward one another more often. But if you feel that either of you is turning away in order to gain more autonomy in the relationship, it’s important to talk about your relative needs for independence. To avoid this discussion simply leads to hurt feelings and the eventual dissolution of the relationship. That’s because it hardly matters whether a person turns away consciously or unconsciously, on purpose or with little intent; the message to the bidder is pretty much the same:

  • I don’t care about your bid.

  • I want to avoid your bid.

  • I’m not interested in your interests.

  • I’ve got more important things on my mind.

  • I’m too busy to pay attention to your bid.

  • Your bid is not worth my time.

  • I want to be more independent than you want me to be.

  How do such messages affect the bidder? That depends on the person. But our research has revealed some common patterns. First, most people feel hurt—“more upset than I ever thought I had a right to be,” some have told us. They may experience feelings of loneliness, isolation, and rejection. It may sound extreme, but imagine the emotions of a child who’s told, “No, you can’t play on our team. We don’t want you. You’re no good at this.” There’s a little kid inside all of us that feels that way when our bids are ignored or dismissed.

  Indeed, a person may feel so distressed that he becomes hypervigilant, or oversensitive to insult. He goes into a state of mind that University of Oregon psychologist Bob Weiss calls “negative sentiment override.” This means that he has an overwhelming negative feeling about the relationship that overrides positive events happening in the moment. It may become difficult for him to determine objectively how others are reacting to his bids. (“Did Sol really give me the bum’s rush this morning, or am I just being paranoid?”) To get a clearer idea, the disregarded bidder starts consciously searching for solid evidence that people are treating him badly. And because he’s got his sensors so finely tuned, he’s likely to find that evidence. (“I’m not just imagining it. Sol held an impromptu meeting about the proposal in his office this afternoon, and they didn’t bother to call me. Something’s up.”)

  A bidder’s reaction to turning away is typically much different than to an outward attack (turning against); in the latter case, the bidder may feel so enraged that he or she is energized by the interaction. In contrast, when somebody turns away from a bid, the bidder loses confidence and self-esteem. In our observational studies, we see how people almost seem to “crumple” when their partners turn away. The bidders don’t get puffed up with anger; they don’t get indignant; they just seem to fold in on themselves. On video, we can see their shoulders sag slightly as if they’ve been deflated. They feel defeated. They give up.

  In children the effects can be much worse. Kids look to their mothers and fathers for emotional cues. They need their parents to validate their feelings and guide them. When parents fail to do this, kids begin to doubt themselves. They begin to feel lonely in their emotions, internalizing problems and wondering, “What’s wrong with me that I feel this way?”

  Feeling discouraged once their bids for connection have been rejected or ignored, people rarely re-bid. I was surprised to find that even in satisfied relationships—where you might expect people to confront one another about behavior that upsets them—couples hardly ever repeat a failed bid. It’s as if something inside the bidder says, “Why bother? It’s no use.” And if this hopeless attitude becomes dominant, there’s less bidding, less opportunity for connection.

  My research shows that habitually turning away can eventually destroy relationships. Even if the bidder doesn’t act hurt or angry at the moment his or her bid is rejected, there seems to be some internal mechanism that keeps score. By watching relationships over time, my colleagues and I have seen that the dismissed bidder typically gets fed up. He or she starts complaining to and criticizing the person who turns away, leading to a pattern of attack and defend. And once this attack/defend pattern becomes ingrained in a relationship, it can start a downward spiral of interaction that eventually ends in the dissolution of that bond. The initial stages of this dynamic were dramatically demonstrated by Anna and Frank, a couple who discussed their marital problems with me as part of a profile on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

  The parents of twins, Anna and Frank were under considerable stress when their babies were small. Anna stayed home with them all day while Frank worked at a commercial art job he hated. At the end of a hectic day, Frank liked spending just a little time alone on his own computer-generated art. The problem was that this was often the same time that Anna most needed help with the twins. Sometimes Frank would get so preoccupied at his computer that he disregarded Anna when she called him for help. Sure, he heard her, Frank admitted, but he knew that if he could just hold her off for a few minutes, she’d solve whatever problem she was having and leave him alone. Using this tactic successfully one night, Frank finished his project, then got up, fixed himself a snack, and proceeded to turn his attention to the babies.

  But that’s not the end of the story, because later that same night, Anna walked into the kitchen, where she saw something that sent her into an absolute rage. There, lying on the counter, was the mayonnaise-covered knife Frank had left when he made his sandwich. Anna picked up the knife, started screaming at him for leaving such a mess, and threw the knife across the room.

  “All the while, I’m thinking, ‘Why am I doing this?’” Anna recalled. “‘Why am I being such a witch?’ It was just a little mayonnaise. It was such a trivial thing. I could easily have just picked up the knife and put it in the sink.”

  “Yes,” I told them, “you could easily have taken care of the knife. But no, it’s not a trivial thing.”

  That’s because, at that moment, that knife was charged with all the anger and contempt Anna felt for Frank because of the way he had turned away from her earlier. This high-energy rage, which seemed to originate from nowhere, was actually linked to her loneliness and the lack of connection she felt. She needed him, but in his mindlessness, he had turned his back on her.

  This dynamic is seen in children all the time—especially in those whose parents are distracte
d by their jobs or in the throes of a crisis such as family illness or divorce. Adults in the family don’t mean to neglect their kids or cause them harm, but they’re so consumed by their own problems that every interaction with their kids amounts to telling them to be quiet or go away. The trouble is, kids are designed by nature to get adult attention any way they can—even if that means becoming increasingly rebellious or belligerent. And so they do, causing more stress in the family.

  That’s how it was for Amy, a divorced mother of two preteen boys, whose life changed when she got accepted to law school. In retrospect, Amy sees that she lost a lot of ground in her relationship with the boys during her first year of study. “They’d come to me for help with homework, or because they were having some silly argument, and I was just so overwhelmed with work that I couldn’t deal with them. I’d say, ‘Let’s talk about it later,’ or ‘You guys are going to have to settle this one on your own.’ After a while they stopped bothering me.”

  But then, one day in the spring, Amy got a call from the boys’ middle school because her older boy, Josh, had been involved in a fight. “When I went to pick him up, this teacher took me aside and started telling me about all these changes she’d seen in him—how his grades were falling and how sullen he’d become,” she remembers. “It really shook me up.”

  Driving home, Amy started peppering Josh with lots of questions, and for most of the ride he didn’t say a thing. “But then suddenly he blew up and said, ‘What the hell do you care? All that matters to you is studying. You don’t care about us anymore.’

  “I was devastated. Of course I cared about them. That’s why I was working so hard—so we could get ahead.” But later that night, as she thought about it, she realized that she never talked to her boys anymore. “All we did was argue—about homework, chores, TV—you name it. And I felt so sad, because we used to get along so well.”