“[He] loved his wife so much that one day he almost told her” (Gottman).
That was funny to me but how often do we “almost tell her (him)?” I once promised myself that I was going to always communicate the loving and positive thoughts that came to my mind about my husband – at the moment I had the thought. I often called him at work to just say” I love you” or “I was just missing you.” Dr. John Gottman, in his book Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, reminds us, “Fondness and admiration are two of the most crucial elements of a rewarding and long-lasting romance. . . . antidotes for contempt.”
“It feels like living in a desert.” This is how Dr. Gottman, describes marriages without at least five positive comments to every negative comment. I suddenly realized that I knew exactly what “It feels like living in a desert.”
Lately due, in part, to a son with physical and mental health challenges, our lives have become quite stressful. These stressful feelings were being directed at each other with short, snappy, comments that hurt and caused us both to feel defensive and criticized. Things felt far more negative than positive. This was definitely not normal for us. We didn’t fight, but we had started to resort to stonewalling and flooding. There seemed to be too much emotional baggage and we didn’t trust ourselves to handle a calm conversation so we just kept shelving the problems. I knew that the criticism, stonewalling, and flooding were not the real issues, only the result of other issues. Something needed to be done, but I didn’t quite know how to approach the issues without making them worse and finding a calm time together was becoming more difficult.
Then the other night, as I was reading about positive sentiment override, I realized something very important for us. We had become involved in negative sentiment override and I knew it could take an even more serious turn if we didn’t recognize and acknowledge it. Normally the comments that had offended us would have made us laugh or been seen as a tease or joke. Now, everything felt personal, offensive, hurtful, and negative. We were reacting from a negative sentiment override rather than a positive sentiment override.
I asked if he would talk with me for a while and I read some of the things we had been reading in class. When I explained to him about positive and negative sentiment override it became clear to him as well that we had almost lost our positive foundation of understanding one another enough to not be offended by something said or done that was not meant to be personal or negative.
With positive sentiment override, little things are just simply understood and not taken personally. You understand why one of you might snap a little or why something was said emotionally and you aren’t offended. When that foundation becomes weakened, due to too much stress and continual negativity, or was never established, it can bring other destructive elements such as harsh startups, contempt, criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and flooding into the relationship.
The talk was amazingly freeing and powerful and gave us both a better understanding of what we had been experiencing. We have been able to regroup and remind ourselves of the fondness and admiration we have enjoyed in our forty-nine years of marriage. We no longer wanted to feel like we were “living in a desert.” Dr. Gottman believes, “masters of relationships” are very gentle, kind, and affectionate with each other. We wanted this in our relationship.
I appreciated the opportunity to discuss our situation before we were destroyed by the slippery slope of negative sentiment override. Being on the same page has given us a great spring board. We are still aware that we will need to work to stay connected and give our relationship the time it needs to re-establish and strengthen the positive sentiment override foundation, but are grateful for the recognition and vision of what needs to happen to avoid any negative sentiment override in our relationship.
References:
Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The seven principles for making marriage work (2nd ed.). New York: Harmony Books.
BEYOND "I DO " 