As I’ve said before, John Gottman has lots of great ideas for couples who want to be happy and healthy. One of his best recommendations is to practice non-defensive listening. Problem is, non-defensive listening might be the hardest thing you’ll have to do in your relationship.

I think we’re hard-wired to be defensive. I would call it a survival skill, a relic from our evolutionary past. I need to preserve and protect myself if I want to survive long enough to procreate, and that means having strong defenses. I need to protect my resources, my shelter, my offspring…and (as human evolution creates complicated social dynamics) my reputation and self-esteem. If you’re mad at me because you think I slighted you, or was being selfish, or ate your Froot Loops, well, that’s not how I see it! So, naturally, I get defensive.

But we’re not done evolving, we humans. To listen non-defensively is another step in human development. It’s a major element of emotional maturity, and emotional maturity is a highly adaptive quality in a human being. You think I slighted you, and you know what? I can see why you think that. I was certainly not at my best when I came home last night. You think I was being selfish? Well, I think it’s true that I’ve been caught up in my own things lately. Why don’t I hit the store for more Froot Loops and we can talk more about it?

You don’t have to agree with your partner 100% when you’re practicing non-defensive listening. You don’t even have to agree 5% of the time. Your partner may be way, way off, accusing you unjustly of something you didn’t do, or think, or feel. But that’s your partner’s reality right now. It’s really helpful to hear her reality as her reality, and let her know that you understand what she’s saying. You may not agree, but you are open and available. You are listening non-defensively. And that creates an opportunity—and a motive—for your partner to listen to your reality. This is very hard! But it can transform your relationship.

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I’m not a parent, but I’ve worked for years with parents, all six of my siblings are parents, and I guess I should just say that sometimes I like to read the stories of people whose experiences are radically different than mine. Maybe that’s why I like mommybloggers (though not all of them use that term to describe themselves). I recently linked to my friend Alissa’s blog, and recommend her if you’re interested in the life and times of a family that was created through adoption. And for a good time on your lunch break, I think you’ll like this blogger. I link to her today because I like her take on psychotherapy in this post, and I believe all couples would be happier and healthier if they had this couple’s attitude! (She’s also hilarious.) Enjoy!

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Like all of their workshops, this Gottman workshop is stuffed with great ideas, sound research, and keen insights. One of my favorites is their work on the concept of “turning toward,” that is, turning toward your partner as a way of being, a stance, a habit. For example, you see that your partner is upset, and rather than “giving her space” (which often enough is a way to avoid her, dressed up as being respectful of her), you lean in and simply say, “You look upset, babe. What’s the matter?” If you’re cultivating the habit of “turning toward,” you’ll begin to recognize thousands of opportunities to do this in your daily life with your partner. If you miss too many of them—or simply don’t recognize them—your relationship begins to erode.

For more on this from my own perspective, see what I said recently about curiosity.

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One of my goals in the next year (or two) is to write an abecedary. An abecedary can take many forms, but for my purposes it would be a small book with 26 chapters. Each chapter would be an essay on concepts I use with clients in therapy, one for each letter of the alphabet. A is for attitude, perhaps: how does your attitude determine your mood, the quality of your relationship, etc.? L is for listening (I’m in favor of listening, and it’s more than you might think it is). You get the idea.

I don’t have all the chapters worked out, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have a good time with chapter three. C is for courage. I’ve written about this before. It takes courage to pursue the relationship you really want, to take your career in a new direction, to confront yourself—and then your partner—about a problem, or about your deepest wish. It certainly takes courage to draw close emotionally to someone who really matters to you, and who (by virtue of being human) is capable of harming or grieving you.

But I also want C to stand for curiosity. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but the lack of curiosity has killed many relationships. If you have the foresight—and the humility—to try to look at the world through your partner’s eyes, you might be less upset by what’s going on with your partner, and feel more free to take action. I like to say that when a couple is shouting at the top of their lungs, they are expressing zero curiosity about the other. No wonder they’re at each other’s throats. I’ve noticed that in any of the hundreds of friendships, working relationships, and other relationships I’ve had over the years, my own curiosity has opened up a lot of opportunities for growth and intimacy.

And yet, I also want C to stand for creativity! I want to talk about the importance of play in relationships, and playfulness in your thinking and behaving throughout your life. Can you recognize your own absurdity and laugh at yourself? If not, I don’t like your chances for happiness. And the happiest couples I’ve worked with have been the ones who allow for delightful creativity, spontaneity, and playfulness in their relationship…even if there’s also been a lot of hurt feelings and hard times.

Lots of people assume that in Therapyland, C stands for communication. Maybe. But I think the three words above are more of a challenge for most people than communication skills. In any case, chapter three is going to be a snap!

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Every year or so I repost this technique. Here’s the last posting, from 2008. It’s a simple way to communicate with your partner (or friend, or colleague, or parent, or pretty much anyone) and work through a tough emotional situation. In the 2008 post I listed three steps, but actually there are four, as follows:

1. Describe the situation you’re concerned about. This is the “Just-the-facts-Ma’am” step. You simply describe what happened, what you observed. For example, you tell your partner, “You came in the door, walked past me, and went into the kitchen without saying anything to me.” Be careful to stick to the facts: all of the information in this step is the kind of information that a video camera would pick up.

2. Describe your feelings, and stick to feeling words like ‘frustrated,’ ‘worried,’ ‘sad,’ or ‘upset.’ If you catch yourself saying sentences that begin with “I feel like…” or “I feel that…” you’re not expressing feelings. You’re expressing thoughts. “I feel like you don’t respect me” is a thought—a belief—but not a feeling.

3. Now it’s okay to describe your thoughts, your judgments, your story about what happened. Continuing with the above example, you would say, “When you walked past me without saying anything, I thought it meant that you were mad at me.” Your belief that your partner was mad at you led to the feeling you described in #2.

4. Finally, state your request. “I’d like to check this out with you, and if you are mad at me, I’d like to work through it with you.”

The value of this technique is that it keeps you in full ownership of your thoughts and feelings, which allows your partner to respond less defensively. It’s not your partner’s fault that you thought he was mad at you. Right or wrong, that’s your story. Using this technique, you’re letting your partner know that you’re open to the possibility that he’s not mad at you, and you’re inviting him into a conversation with you about your story. This is much more effective than simply accusing your partner of being mad at you without taking the time to take ownership of your own reactions and conclusions.

Often, when people say they have communication problems, this is the kind of thing they’re not doing. Give it a try, use your own language and turns of phrase, and be patient with yourself as you work on improving your ability to relate effectively to others.

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Every once in a while I notice themes cropping up in my work with several clients. Lately one of those themes has been the ordinary and lovable absurdity of human beings. So often we suffer and struggle because we fail to laugh at ourselves, and miss out on the opportunity to look at ourselves with a humorous awareness of our own absurdity.

One of my favorite films is the wicked (in all the good ways) Dogma, a film that spoofs the Catholic church and organized religion in general. In one scene, a human is talking to an angel, and she’s commenting on how ridiculous the angel’s concerns are. The angel (played by Alan Rickman) responds, “There’s nothing funnier than the ridiculous faces you people make mid-coitus.” It’s one of my favorite comments on human sexuality, and supports my belief that if you can laugh (kindly) at your sexual self, you will be much more likely to enjoy great sex.

Most of my clients come to counseling with problems that are dead serious. It’s a big mistake to just minimize those problems and laugh them away. At the same time, it’s also healthy to be aware of your own silliness, your own fallibility, your own absurdity. To illustrate, I’ll present a photo of a creature (in my care) who has no problem looking ridiculous!

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I found a lot to like in Lee Siegel’s recent thoughts on the trouble and strife of John and Elizabeth Edwards. (I posted about their crisis last year.) As a therapist, I sat up in my chair when I read this:

“A friend of mine once said that the only two people who know what’s going on between a man and a woman are the man and the woman themselves. He was half right. The man and the woman—or man and man, woman and woman; it’s all the same—are the last to know. The idea that we can precisely fathom people’s emotions and motives is absurd. We can barely comprehend our own.”

I’m nodding my head up and down right now. Siegel is right about this. As a therapist, I’m paid to know a lot about relationships, learn a lot about my own clients, and use that knowledge to help them work through their most difficult relationship problems. And I know that to do my job well, I have to have a high degree of self-awareness and self-confrontation. And yet, there’s always something going on that will escape my awareness, and that of my clients. No human being can be fully understood or known by another human being (or themselves, for that matter). I expect that even if I live to be ninety years old, I’ll still not have taken the full measure of my own character, let alone those of others.

But if that’s the case, why do people make judgments about the Edwardses? Or—here’s a more difficult question for me—why do people go to therapy? My answer: as right as Siegel is about the need for humility in these matters, there’s a lot we can know about ourselves and each other. I will die not knowing everything there is to know about myself, but that doesn’t mean I plan to live an incurious life. The fact that we will never know everything about the universe didn’t stop us from launching the Hubble telescope.

So I’ll draw a lesson on humility from Lee Siegel’s reflections, but I won’t be paralyzed by that humility. I’ll keep wrestling with myself and engaging with other people in the adventure of self-discovery because I have faith that our exploration of the human universe will take us far. We’ll never reach the end, but our effort is part of what makes us human in the first place.

Meanwhile, I wish both John and Elizabeth Edwards well. As with all couples who are going through a hellish time, I hope they can find their way to a peaceful resolution of their crisis, and learn a lot about themselves along the way.

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Are you in a relationship with someone—at home or at work—where you feel like you have to walk on eggshells? You’re afraid that if you speak the truth, he’ll blow up. You’re afraid that if you tell her she’s wrong about something, she’ll explode. You feel like you’re walking on eggshells.

If you and I are working on this together, chances are I’ll talk with you about experimenting with breaking those shells. It’s not always wise to say or do things that lead to another person blowing up, but then, it’s not always wise to tiptoe through your life out of fear that another person is going to lose it if you act like your real self.

Interpersonal explosions can be painful and destructive. Sometimes discretion really is the best option, particularly if you don’t know someone too well, or if you’re new to a situation (particularly a job) and you need to get your bearings before you start acting decisively. But other times, it’s best to challenge yourself a little bit…particularly if the person you’re afraid of is your longtime spouse! And the best way to do it is to look at it as a growth opportunity—not for the other person, but for you.

Here’s what I mean. The other person may or may not learn how to control and effectively use her anger. He may or may not learn how to be more responsive and less reactive to the thoughts and behaviors of others. She may or may not learn how to be a truly powerful adult—and the adults who are truly powerful are the ones who know how to work with their rage and make sense of it. But if the other person is not willing to learn, not interested (or perhaps not able) to develop his or her emotional maturity, you can get better at handling this kind of person. The learning for you is not learning how to change or reform the other person, but rather to break the eggshells, allow the other person to do whatever he does, and manage your own anxiety—and your own behaviors—in the process.

Having said all that, I need to add that your safety is important. I’m not recommending that you “break the eggshells” with a person who has been violent with you or others, or a person with whom you don’t feel safe. But if it’s just a situation where the other person’s anger is highly uncomfortable for you, then it can be a chance for you to build your skills at working with angry people without avoiding them or tiptoeing around them.

Remember: the person over whom you have the most control—and the person most likely to learn and grow in this situation—is you. Think about breaking those shells. Imagine how satisfying it would be for you to be more skillful at this!

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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about resentment. If you’re human, you’ve felt it. You’ve resented your partner for assuming you’d be a certain way, or do a certain thing. You’ve resented your parents for favoring your sister. (And you know they did!) You’ve resented your colleague for getting promoted ahead of you. There are any number of thousands of reasons to feel resentful.

The problem is, resentment is just about the most worthless emotional state I can think of. (Shame is rarely useful, but even shame can sometimes be a motivator for good behavior and personal growth.) But resentment is a lot like getting your car stuck in a big pothole. What are you going to do now? Or it’s like the Jail square on the Monopoly board. There’s nothing to do there but wait for the Get Out of Jail card.

Here’s my solution to the resentment problem: if you feel resentful, tell yourself that as dark as your thoughts and feelings are, you’re really not being very serious. That’s right: you’re not being serious. You’re not taking your situation seriously enough to move past resentment and do something about it. Let’s go through one of the examples above to see what I mean:

If you resent your partner for making assumptions about you, that means you’re not taking yourself seriously. For example, let’s say your partner assumed you would follow his lead when it comes to sex. He has preferences–he likes his positions, he expects a certain frequency, a certain duration, a certain type of massage oil, you get the idea–and you resent him because he never asked you what you wanted, what you preferred.

And maybe he’s resentful too–resentful that you’re complaining about all of this. He’s resenting your resentment! If this is going on, it probably means that you yourself need to take more seriously your own vision of sex and relationships. It’s not your partner’s job to automatically tune in to your preferences. It’s your job to put them out there on your own behalf. If you’re resenting him, that means you’re still waiting around for him to do your own work. You’re waiting for him to become more interested in your view of things than you seem to be yourself! If you want a different sexual experience, resenting your partner won’t make it happen. You have to get in touch with what you want, then take your preference (and yourself) seriously enough to assert for it.

If you feel resentful, that probably makes sense. (I’ll even grant you that your partner is probably being insensitive!) But to get what you want, it helps to notice your resentment, see how it just keeps you stuck in Monopoly Jail, step out of it, and say, “Hey! So let’s have sex my way tonight. I love my way, I’m good at it, and I love you, so I like our chances for having a great time!”

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For some reason I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to news articles over the past few months about the Obama Administration and its positions on the “Defense of Marriage”* Act (DOMA) and the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Maybe it’s just that I had a busy summer. But I’m now starting to take an interest. And I’m not surprised to tell you that my favorite take on the issues was written by Hendrik Hertzberg. He summarizes the facts, offers a good analysis of how the Administration got itself into this mess, and states well the consequences of further inaction.

I tend to be a moderate, politically speaking (firmly left-of-center, and I was quite sorry to see Ted Kennedy leave the scene, but a moderate nonetheless). And I understand that Obama is tackling a lot of problems right now. Just today I said to someone that Obama didn’t just take over managing the store, he took it over while the building was on fire, a hurricane was hitting the town, and someone was holding up the cash register. Still, I don’t understand why–at a bare minimum–the White House and the Department of Justice can’t be more consistent, and more progressive, on the issue of GLBT civil rights. I understand some of the moderate-to-conservative arguments about the issue–that we can’t legislate our way through issues like this. (Though I disagree.) And I understand the political realities Obama faces. I would even understand if he and his staff are being a little superstitious: President Clinton tackled both gay rights and health care in his first year, and that didn’t go well. No, not at all.

But it’s time. It’s time for this new president to honor the promises he made to the GLBT community. I have little doubt that sometime this fall a health-care reform bill will become law. And as a health-care provider, I look forward to that. But the civil rights of GLBT Americans must also be asserted, and protected.

* I just couldn’t resist putting “Defense of Marriage” in quotation marks, since in my view DOMA does nothing to defend marriage, no matter how you define the word.

UPDATE: View the comments section for an interesting back-and-forth on the word “moderate.”

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