"Wasn't Expecting That": Treasuring Your Partner

The poet Mark Nepo speaks about splashing your partner with love. It's a beautiful image. What if we lived every day with the awareness that we need to celebrate and appreciate our partner? What if we were conscious of the passing of time and intentional about savoring the joy available in the little details of life together as a couple or as a family?

Over the last 25 years, I've done grief counseling with many individuals who've lost their life partner. It's made me reflect on all that is to be learned from a strong, long-term marriage. If only we could each take a lesson on love from people who've endured such a loss.

I was touched by this short video clip of English singer/songwriter Jamie Lawson of his song, Wasn't Expecting That. This sweet song sets the right tone for focusing on appreciating your partner while you can. Whether you have 10 years together or 60, the same rules apply. Here are a few of the things I've learned from individuals and couples over the years about making your partnership extraordinary:

1. Don't sweat the small stuff. Most stuff in daily life is the small stuff. Don't be petty. Exercise more restraint instead.

2. Be fun to live with. Dr. Phil asked people on his show, "How much fun are you to live with?" Choose to be a beneficial presence in your relationship and your family, not difficult or cranky.

3. Stay curious about your partner. Don't assume things. Each of you keeps growing and changing, so you will never fully know each other. Enjoy the ever evolving mystery.

4. Express your feelings.

5. Be strong enough to be vulnerable. Own it when you are feeling needy, tired, moody, worried, sad or difficult.

6. Ask for what you really, really want. Don't settle for a mediocre relationship.

7. Follow through. Do what you say you will be doing. Show your partner they can trust you because you live life in an honorable way.

8. Express your gratitude.

9. Treat your partner even better than you do your dearest friends.

10. Make yourself available to spend time together. Enjoy high energy fun together.

11. Freely admit when you mess up.

12. Share in life's work. Don't under-function at home so that your partner feels burdened and overwhelmed. Many tasks are more fun together, like cooking, gardening, or washing dishes.

13. Protect your relationship by setting clear boundaries. Don't confide in friends or family about your relationship concerns. Be brave and go direct, or go together to couples counseling with an emotionally focused therapist if you get stuck. Don't keep secrets that could jeopardize your relationship.

14. See the good in your partner. Shine a light on it. Comment on it. There are numerous studies that show that the happiest couples see each other in a consistently favorable light, even better than they are. Try to see your partner's good intentions when possible. Don't be the critic. Build up and encourage your partner's best self when you see it.

15. Try to see it their way. I'm always encouraged with people in couples counseling when they can demonstrate genuine empathy for how their partner might be feeling.  There are often several right perspectives on things, not just yours. Demonstrating empathy and compassion for your partner is a sign of emotional maturity. It means you can transcend self.

16. Use loving touch and affection. Hug and kiss hello and goodbye each day. These are part of the thousand little threads of connection between you. Cuddle. Hold hands. Give your partner a backrub when they are stressed. Both men and women like to have their partner initiate affection, so don't get stuck in gender roles on this one. Call each other when you are apart. Write love letters.

17. Don't get so wrapped up in raising the children that you forget the sacredness of spending some time focusing on just the two of you.

18. Take responsibility for making yourself interesting and happy and splashing it out on your partner. Don't expect your partner to make you happy. It's an inside job.

19. Learn to disagree respectfully. It's been said that every marriage has a couple unsolvable problems, and what counts is how you discuss it. Fight fairly. You each have your own brain and will see some things differently. This is normal.

20. Embrace your differences. You are different people and we raised in different families with their own patterns and traditions. You will likely have unique interests. This keeps the relationship interesting, especially if you support each other's individual interests. Actor Paul Newman and actress Joanne Woodward were a great example of this. She loved the ballet while he liked to race cars as a hobby. They loved each other deeply for 50 years before Paul's death, but could individuate from each other.

Life goes very quickly. We are each more fragile than we realize. Make it your intention to really focus, breathe and take in the joy of day to day life with your partner and your family. Like in the Jamie Lawson song, it will end one day when you don't expect it. Go for an extraordinary relationship starting today.You want to ensure that you have wonderful, sweet memories left behind. Splash some love and happiness around generously now while you can.

Your Family of Origin: It's Where Your Story Begins

You get more than your eye and hair color from your family. Understanding as much as you can about your family of origin is incredibly helpful as a starting place for working on yourself. Just as we inherit DNA, we also get patterns of behavior and ways of being in relationships scripted for us. If we have insight about what our parents' and grandparents' lives were like, how they related to others, and what their emotional lives were like, we can better understand ourselves.

As a structural family therapist, I often draw out maps of family experience known as genograms. In them, I work with individuals, couples and families to illuminate and bring the family history to life. We go as many generations back as we have information about. Here are some family patterns to consider:

1. Where were your family members raised? Did they immigrate from somewhere else? Why?

2. What do you know about their childhood experiences? Socio-economic status of each part of the family?

3. What educational level did people have? What kind of work did they do?

4. What do you know about how happy the marriages were in both sides of your family? Were family members expressive? Unexpressive? Affectionate? Aloof?

5. Are there family members who struggled with alcohol or substance abuse? Was it treated or untreated? How did family cope with challenges in healthy or unhealthy ways?

6. Who struggled with anxiety or depression? Was it treated or untreated?

7. For deceased family members, at what age did they die, and from what cause? How did losses impact the family? Are there suicides in the family? Are there chronic or life threatening illnesses? Deaths from war?

8. Who stays married no matter what ? Do people divorce and/or remarry? Are there patterns of infidelity?

9. What role does faith play in any of the family?

10. What is each generations' style of parenting? How small or large are the families? How did parents discipline? Do families stay close, or splinter apart?

11. Where are the alliances? Who is close to who? Who fights with who?

12.What are the family traditions and values on each side of the family?

13. Who moves away? Who stays close to home?

14. Who cares for aging relatives? What is home like?

15.What is the family most proud of in terms of accomplishments?

There are many subtle impacts of your family of origin role models. For example, if your parents fought a great deal and were not openly kind or affectionate with each other, that's the script you get by growing up with them. If you understand that, you can choose to love your parents but decide to rewrite how couples interact with each other. You can decide to be caring and loving, and model something completely different to your own children. That's powerful change.

Knowing your family genogram isn't about blame. It's about understanding where and how your story begins and what feels "normal" to you. When you marry, your partner comes with their own family story. Neither one is all good or all bad. It's just where you start. The more honest, open and non-defensive you can be about the patterns in your family, the better. It allows you the emotional freedom to make choices about which parts of the family transmission pattern you want to continue, and where you chose to edit and rewrite your own life story.

What Makes Families Happier?

How do we build happier families?


I've been thinking about this question and discussing it with my own family since I ran across excerpts from a new book this week titled The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Marriage, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More (2013, published by William Morrow).


The author, Bruce Feiler, has some good ideas, and even backs them up with some recent research about families, children, and couples where he can. Here are some of his ideas that rang true with me as a family therapist:

1.      Happier families talk. They communicate with each other.

 

2.      Happier couples, and families, celebrate each other's accomplishments.

 

3.      Healthier families adapt to changes. Change happens. You might as well embrace it!

4.      Happier families try. They put time and effort into making family a top priority.

5.      Happier families do their best to eat dinner together as often as possible. If not dinner, then breakfast, or a snack, or something else is almost as good. Just do something! Feiler cites one cross-cultural study showing the US ranking 23rd out of 25 countries when it comes to eating meals together.

The article about Feiler’s book got me thinking about my own observations and reflections about other ways of helping create a happier life as a family:

1.      No family, just like no individual, can be happy all the time. We need to be realistic about our expectations that families are made up of individuals whose needs will differ at times. Conflicts will occur. Sibling rivalry is normal. We need to be able to disagree respectfully, compromise at times, and make repairs when needed.

 

2.      Mutual respect is key, between the adults, between the children and adults, and between the children. We need to make room for individual differences.

3.      Look for connecting points. Every week, we need to work some into our busy schedules. These include hugging goodbye or hello, having fun together in a shared activity, date nights, family game night, working on projects together, bedtime rituals, shared meals, playing sports together, cooking together, doing outdoor activities together, and making check-in points with each other.

4.      Encourage each other. Most adults and children get far more critical comments each day than positive ones. Happy families make a point to express what they see in each other's behaviors that they like. This is known as ‘catching your loved ones being good.’

5.      Happy families come in different shapes and sizes. Not all happy families have two adults. There can still be a decision to be a happy family even after the loss of parent by death or after divorce. I’ve seen it happen. It’s a decision and a choice. Happy families focus on being resilient. In fact, this makes you a good role model for your children, to be happy anyway, and try to live the best life you can, despite challenges.

6.      Loyalty. Happier families have each other’s back, and go direct with problems to the person they have the problem with, rather than to someone else.

7.      Credibility. In happier families, people keep their commitments. They do what they say they are going to do. The adults can be counted on, both by each other, and by the children.

8.      There are clear rules, consistently enforced. There is structure, but also some flexibility within that structure. The adults are the architects of the family. The children are not in charge.

9.      Mix it up and have some high-energy fun together. It might not be football, like the Kennedy clan, but doing some high-energy activity together is bonding.

10.  Everyone takes out their own stress/trash. Every adult needs to learn how to deal with their own stress and not bring it home to take it out on the family. Children and teens need to be taught how to do the same. Just like we need to teach our children to clean up after themselves, and not leave messes around the house for others to clean up, think of stress in the same way. Do it yourself.

11.  Make it okay to ask for help.

12.  Don't be so child-focused that the adults ignore each other. It’s helpful for children to realize that there are other needs in the family besides their own.

13.  Apologize when you are wrong. This makes it easier for your children to do the same.

14.  Get outside yourselves. Families are happier when they volunteer, or in some way become aware of the needs of others. It puts things in perspective.

 

15.  Warm it up. Express affection with touch, hugs, a kiss, or a verbal or written “I love you” as often as possible.

If these are some of the secrets of happy families, let’s share them! If your family life isn't happy, not much else matters.