#8: Barreling Over the Falls (Part 6 - How to Save YOUR Life: Putting On Your Own Mask First)

"Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend ..."

-The Fray, "How to Save a Life"

In the last post, we examined the concept of offering our partners a lifeline when we see that they are headed down the cascade. Additionally, it is necessary to remember another important principle if we are going to save our relationship lives. If you have ever been on a plane (and even if you haven't) you are probably familiar with the following phrase that is repeated during the preflight safety demonstration: "Please secure your own mask first, before helping others." If we really want to be of help to our partners, we cannot expect them to do things that we are unwilling to do. Thus, we must first ensure that we are not in danger of going over the cascade ourselves. As before, a quote from The Fray (cited above) can help us to gain proper perspective. We must ask ourselves, "Where did I go wrong, or where am I in danger of going wrong?" We must be sure we as individuals are on solid ground. Then, and only then, can we offer our partners a lifeline. If we are unwilling to look inward, it is likely that we will lose a friend, or a spouse, etc.—we will alienate ourselves from others. It is also important to recognize that at various times in our relationships, we will be on both the giving and the receiving ends of such lifelines and that they are good no matter which end we are on. Having said that, the following is a list of some practical things we can do to make sure that we as individuals are doing our best to maintain relationship stability as we interact with others.

1. Complain, but don't blame. We already went over this in the last post; as such, we will let that suffice.

2. Remember who you're talking to. This is your wife, your friend, your brother ... You care about this person! Gottman says the following about the marital relationship, but I believe that the principle can be applied to any relationship: "People who are happily married like each other. If they didn't they wouldn't be happily married ... By simply reminding yourself of your spouse's positive qualities—even as you grapple with each other's flaws—you can prevent a happy marriage from deteriorating" (The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, p. 65).

3. Be clear and direct. If you have a want or a need, make sure that your partner understands that want or need. Don't make him or her guess; just be specific. Ladies, this is especially true for us guys. As a group, we don't get subtlety very well. Look us in the face, and tell us what you want. If you want your partner to take out the trash, for example, don't say something like, "The trash sure is getting full." Simply ask, "Would you please take out the trash?" Which brings us to our next point ...

4. Be polite. As we will discuss at length in the future, we stupid humans do a lot of things backward. Why are we so polite to the guy that hands us our food at the McDonald's drive-thru and so rude to our families as soon as we roll up the window, bag of food in hand? Does anyone else think this is a ridiculous phenomenon? Ideally, we should be kind to everyone. I, however, know that I'm not an "ideal" person and that I'm probably going to do something stupid very soon. But in all seriousness, can we all do ourselves a favor and try not to do that something stupid to the people we supposedly care about the most? If you're going to be mean, be mean to strangers. They'll get over it. Your kids, your husband, your mother—it'll leave deeper scars on them, I promise. Be nice to everyone, but be especially nice to your family.

5. Don't store things up. For a hilarious example of what not to do, click here. (Pay special attention to the "Airing of Grievances.") So what's wrong with Frank's idea? Certainly not the pole, with its metallic luster and high strength-to-weight ratio. So let's look elsewhere, specifically at the "Airing of Grievances." First of all, you should have more than one time per year that is designated for discussing issues in your relationships. For married couples, I recommend setting aside time once a week. Talk to each other about both successes and failures, as well as goals, plans, etc. It is also a great idea to simply deal with problems as they arise. However, if they remain unresolved at the time of your weekly planning/discussion session, this is a good time to make sure that you come to a mutually agreeable solution.

On the worksheet that I passed out in class on Friday, there were 10 spaces. I have only given you 5 items. I challenge you to come up with some things on your own and post them here on the site. To get you started, here is a link to the music video of The Fray's "How to Save a Life." As you watch the video, think about things that you could do to avoid hurting others, to reconcile with those you may have wronged—think about how to save the lives of your most important relationships. I look forward to your responses, and I'll see you in class.

#7: Barreling Over the Falls (Part 5 - How to Save A Life)

"As he begins to raise his voice, you lower yours and grant him one last choice ..."

-The Fray, "How to Save a Life"

As we begin to think about saving the life of our relationship when we see our partner start to barrel down the cascade, this quote from The Fray's "How to Save a Life" can point us in the right direction. One way to throw your partner a lifeline is to learn to listen objectively, without taking offense. If your partner introduces criticism into a conversation, ask yourself, "Is there a legitimate complaint hidden within this criticism?" You can then simply respond to your partner's complaint, to what he or she should have said instead of what was actually said. You do this not because you think criticism is acceptable, but because you want to give your partner a chance to make a better choice. Just remember that you cannot control whether or not the lifeline is accepted, only whether or not it is offered in the first place.

In order to do this, however, we need to know how to effectively differentiate between criticizing (which is obviously bad) and complaining (which, when defined as we will define it, is OK). In both Part 2 and last Friday's class, we defined criticism as attacking a person instead of an issue, adding that it includes global statements about or attacks on a person's character. Complaining, on the other hand, is simply addressing the issue at hand. Here is an example offered by Dr. Gottman that can help us understand the difference between complaining and criticizing.

"'I'm really angry that you didn't sweep the kitchen floor last night. We agreed that we'd take turns doing it' is a complaint. 'Why are you so forgetful? I hate having to always sweep up the kitchen floor when it's your turn. You just don't care' is a criticism. A complaint focuses on a specific behavior, but a criticism ups the ante by throwing in blame and general character assassination. Here's a recipe: To turn any complaint into a criticism, just add my favorite line: 'What's wrong with you?'" (The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, pp. 27-28)

Remember, I'm not asking anyone to become a victim and submit to endless criticism. I'm simply suggesting that we would all do well to expand our vision, recognize that others make mistakes, and allow them the opportunity to make better choices. Don't take offense and get defensive; instead, defend your relationship by offering a lifeline. Learn how to save a life.

#6: Barreling Over the Falls (Part 4 - The Cascade)

As I mentioned in Part 2, there was a reason for my presenting the four horsemen the way that I did (speaking of the visual layout of the chart). In case you forgot, let me refresh your memory.


On this chart, the horsemen resemble a staircase; we can imagine a person descending the stairs from left to right. But, if you will give me a little leeway here (and believe me, I know this chart is further from art than simply the letters "ch" and that what I am about to say is a bit of a stretch), I'd like to suggest that their configuration somewhat resembles a waterfall. [For a clip of a real waterfall, or actually multiple real waterfalls, click this link. You'll see Niagara Falls, which we talked specifically about in class.]

As we said earlier, the horsemen tend to appear in this order. In class we used the metaphor of going over a waterfall and crashing onto the rocks (stonewalling, eh? ... bah dum, ching!) at the bottom to describe their becoming pervasive in our interactions. Now, suppose you saw that your partner was about to go over the edge of this waterfall or had even started to fall already. What would you do? If there was any way that you could throw your partner a lifeline or something to hold on to, would you do it? Would you save your partner's life? If you cared at all about your partner or even had a shred of human decency, the obvious answer would be "Yes."

Luckily for us as partners, we don't have to watch in horror as our partners and our relationships plunge to almost certain destruction on the stones at the bottom of the cascade. We can help. We can pull our partners back to safety, if they choose to let us. We can save the lives of our relationships. In the next post, we'll talk about how.

#5: Barreling Over the Falls (Part 3 - Desire and Deliberate Destruction)

Now that we have a better understanding of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, there are no doubt those among us whose mental panic alarms are going crazy as times when the horsemen have trotted into recent conversations resurface in our memories. Don't worry—yet. As we discussed in class, even couples that have stable, happy relationships will find that three of the four horsemen still rear their ugly heads from time to time. Although the frequency of the horsemen's appearance differs between stable and unstable relationships (for a clip of Dr. Gottman explaining this idea, click here), there is only one of these four potentially devastating types of interaction that basically doesn't happen at all among happy couples. When we discussed as a class our initial ideas of which horseman wouldn't be used by happy couples and why, class members gave various answers and provided logical explanations for their reasoning. However, none of us has done over 30 years of research on this stuff, so let's stick with what the expert has to say. As we read together in class, Gottman has written, "The amount of contempt in stable, happy marriages is essentially zero" (The Marriage Clinic, p. 47).

So that answers the question "Which?", but we are still left with the question "Why?" Why is it that contempt is absent from happy relationships? The answer is simple, and it can be summed up in a single word—desire. Happy couples want to be happy, so they are happy. I firmly believe that we get what we really want in life. Now I know some of you are thinking that I'm crazy, but I am convinced that this is true. You might say, "Well, I want to have a good relationship, but I don't have one. Therefore that can't be true." My question to you is, "Are you sure?" Take a good hard look at your behavior. Is it consistent with having a good relationship, whatever the relationship might be? What kinds of things do you do on a regular basis to make yourself and/or your partner miserable? Ultimately, each individual must ask, "Am I sabotaging my relationship?"

That is where this discussion begins and ends. If a person uses contempt (or in other words, if a person tries to hurt his/her partner), can that person honestly say that he or she wants to have a good relationship with the person that he or she is trying to hurt? At the very least, the answer at that specific moment in time has to be a resounding "No." I repeat: we get what we really want. If we want to hurt people, we can probably do it fairly easily. As the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in his masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov, "People sometimes talk of bestial [or animal] cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel.” Some among us are well trained in the art of contempt, brandishing a belittling brush to paint our partners as miserable wretches deserving of our denouncement. If we are guilty of doing this, however, we will be left with a relationship that is as dark and desolate as we have made it out to be. Simply put, happy couples don't try to hurt each other. Do they hurt each other? Certainly. We all do some pretty stupid things at times. But do they hurt each other on purpose? No—and that's what sets them apart.

#4: Barreling Over the Falls (Part 2 - The Four Horsemen)

In his book The Marriage Clinic, Dr. Gottman states that "the four horsemen generally come in a sequence, with criticism starting it all off" (p. 47). The sequence he uses in The Marriage Clinic is as follows:


That we diagrammed their order of appearance in this staggered way is no accident, as we will discuss later. For now, however, let us examine each of these four toxic techniques individually.

1. Criticism - In class we offered a simple definition of criticism, stating that in this context it means attacking a person instead of an issue. Gottman notes that criticism includes "negative words about your mate's character or personality" (The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, p. 27).

Now, like I said in class, every relationship should have issues, disagreements, and differences of opinion. Let me say that again: you and your partner should have issues. If you don't, then one or the other of you is either lying or being coerced into "agreeing" with the other partner, which is really just another way of saying "lying." So don't be a liar. Admit it—you have issues. Again, it's OK. You should. The real question is, how do you deal with those issues? As Dr. Gottman asserts, "I predict marriages will falter not because they argue ... The clues to [a couple's] future breakup are in the way they argue" (The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, p. 26).

2. Defensiveness - Since criticism is an attack, it follows quite naturally that the person being attacked would want to put up some kind of defense. Gottman says simply, "Defensiveness is any attempt to defend oneself from a perceived attack" (The Marriage Clinic, p. 44). He continues by saying that "defensiveness usually includes denying responsibility for the problem ... a common from of defensiveness ... [is] counter-attacking when attacked" (The Marriage Clinic, p. 45). In class, we called this phenomenon "Cross-criticizing."

3. Contempt - In class we defined contempt as attacking with the intent to injure. Gottman adds, "Contempt is any statement or nonverbal behavior that puts oneself on a higher plane than one's partner" (The Marriage Clinic, p. 45). It can include such things as mocking (especially in public), eye rolling, sarcasm, etc.

4. Stonewalling - In class we discussed stonewalling as simply another way of saying "emotional withdrawal." Gottman concludes that those who stonewall (usually men) "use brief monitoring glances, look away and down, vocalize hardly at all—in effect, [they] convey the presence of an impassive stone wall" (The Marriage Clinic, p. 46). He offers this hypothetical, although very common, example:

"Think of the husband who comes home from work, gets met with a barrage of criticism from his wife, and hides behind the newspaper. The less responsive he is, the more she yells. Eventually she gets up and leaves the room. Rather than confronting his wife, he disengages. By turning away from her, he is avoiding a fight, but he is also avoiding his marriage. He has become a stonewaller" (The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, p. 33).

So there you have them, the four types of communication that are most likely to ruin your relationship. At this point, you're probably thinking something along the lines of, "Oh crap. I do that stuff all the time. My relationship has no chance of survival. We are doomed." Don't worry—you're not dead yet. It's probably not as bad as you think. In the next post, we will discuss the existence of many of these behaviors even among couples that are happy and have stable marriages. In the end, it is really a two-fold question of the desires of our hearts and the relative level of our stupidity.

#3: Barreling Over the Falls (Part 1 - Introduction)

Tonight's class was entitled, "Barreling Over the Falls: Life in the Middle of the Relationship Apocalypse." As an experiment, I'm going to try posting a lot of what we talked about in class on the blog. I will do it in various segments, and I'll also include videos, quotes, etc. that were not shared in class but that might add to your understanding of the principles we discussed.

We started off tonight's class by discussing the work of Dr. John Gottman, who is identified on the cover of his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (which, by the way, I highly recommend) as the "Country's Foremost Relationship Expert." Sounds kind of cocky, but he really is very good at what he does. For a clip in which he explains one of his methods of observing couples (the "Love Lab" that I briefly referenced in class), click here. Anyway, we began class by reading the following quote from Malcom Gladwell's book blink:

“[Dr. John] Gottman has proven something remarkable. If he analyzes an hour of a man and wife talking, he can predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will still be married fifteen years later. If he watches a couple for fifteen minutes, his success rate is just under ninety percent.”

That's pretty amazing stuff. During the course of his 30+ years of studying couple interactions, Dr. Gottman has been able to determine many behaviors that help relationships to thrive. He has also isolated the types of communication that are most likely to usher in the end of a relationship, which he has aptly labeled "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." We will begin our discussion of these "certain kinds of negativity, [which] if allowed to run rampant, are so lethal to a relationship" (The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, p. 27) in the next post.

#2: My Other Blog

I just wanted to leave a quick post to let current Life in the middle class members and other site visitors know that I do have another blog as well. Unlike this blog, however, the other blog is not necessarily related to any other work I do. As such, any content found there should be regarded as my own ideas, and I accept responsibility for them as such. Any statements, artwork, etc. should not in any way be interpreted to represent the views of any of my employers, or anyone else for that matter. The ideas are mine alone, unless otherwise stated, in which case proper citation will be utilized and credit given to the individual(s) that created the original work. Be advised as well that on my other blog I take a more liberal license in discussing what I would call "religious matters," though the ideas are not necessarily limited to any one particular religion. Likewise, my comments should not be interpreted as being indicative of the official views of any particular religion. Again, I am solely responsible for the content of the blog. Having said all that, I do believe that the resources available on my other blog could be beneficial to nearly anyone. As such, I invite you to peruse its contents if you so desire. The address is insideoutchange.blogspot.com. You can access the site by using the previous link, by typing the address into your browser, or by clicking on my profile info on this blog and using the link provided there. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to comment or email.

#1: The Law of Human Nature

We had what I thought was an interesting discussion in class last Friday about choices, consequences, law, and society. As a follow-up to that discussion, I wanted to post some of C. S. Lewis' assertions about what he calls the "Law of Nature" or "The Law of Human Nature." I hope you will find them helpful in rounding out and/or adding to our class discussion. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to comment on this site or to bring them with you to class this Friday.

"Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kinds of things they say. 'How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you'—'That's my seat, I was there first'—'Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm' ... 'Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine'—'Come on, you promised.' People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.

Now what interests me in all these remarks is that the man who is saying them is not merely saying that the other man's behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: 'To hell with your standard.' Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given a bit of orange, [etc.] ... It looks in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behavior or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not ... they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a [football player] had committed a [penalty] unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.

Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong ... was called that Law of Nature because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean, of course, that you might not find an odd individual here or there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human idea of decent behavior was obvious to every one. And I believe they were right ...

But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break a promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson ... Have [such individuals] not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?

It seems, then, that we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may sometimes be mistaken about them, just as people sometimes [do math] wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste or opinion any more than the multiplication table ...

[We] believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much—we feel the Rule of Law pressing on us so—that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. For you notice that it is only for our bad behaviour that we find all these explanations. It is our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we [give ourselves credit for] our good temper." (see Lewis, Mere Christianity, pp. 3-8)

As I said before, I hope you find this helpful, and I also hope that it enables you to see things as they really are. Best wishes.