Relationships

There’s a comfortable assumption baked into most relationship advice: if you’re a supportive partner – the kind who listens, takes on a chore when your partner is overwhelmed, asks how the meeting went – then your relationship will be better off for it. Support is treated as the input, and satisfaction as the output, with the work happening somewhere in between. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Psychology by Michelle Roth and colleagues at the University of Zurich and Florida State suggests this picture is missing a step. When the researchers looked at 163 long-term couples (mean relationship length: about 30 years), they found that the direct link between providing support and feeling satisfied was surprisingly weak. Most of the work was being done by something happening in between: the helper perceiving that their partner was grateful for the help. ...

Ask someone what a great relationship is built on and you’ll likely hear some version of the same answer: find the right person. Someone you’re wildly attracted to, someone who makes you feel alive, someone with whom the spark never fades. The implicit model is that love is something you fall into — and if it doesn’t last, it’s because you fell into it with the wrong person. Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh, a social psychologist and relationship therapist who has spent over two decades working with couples across more than forty countries, calls this the submergent model of love. And her research suggests it’s one of the most reliable ways to end up disappointed. ...

Ask someone what makes a relationship work and you’ll typically hear some version of the same answer: find the right person. Someone kind, emotionally intelligent, financially stable, with compatible values and a good sense of humor. The implicit assumption is that relationship quality is largely a function of who your partner is – their traits, their personality, their baggage. A landmark 2020 study by Samantha Joel, Paul Eastwick, and 84 collaborators1 puts a large dent in that assumption. ...

Validation refers to the process of communicating to another person that their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are important and they matter. Validation doesn’t mean agreeing or approving. In fact, it conveys that a relationship is important and solid – even when two parties disagree. Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT) identifies six methods of validation that a practitioner can employ with a client, ranging from validation level (VL) 1 through 6, increasing sequentially in difficulty. Although initially developed to treat patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD), these validation strategies are useful in any interpersonal context. ...

While there are many couples therapy approaches in use, only a few have been subjected to repeated empirical testing. Two particularly promising treatments are Behavioral Couples Therapy (BCT) and Emotionally-Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT). BCT originates from operant learning theory and the observation that distressed couples tend to punish each other for relationship-harming behaviors more than they reward each other for relationship-enhancing behaviors. The two main components of BCT are behavioral exchange training and communication and problem-solving skills. Behavioral exchange training involves each partner learning which of their behaviors reinforce their partner, and agreeing to mutually engage in those behaviors. Techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) have also been incorporated into BCT (with the resulting treatment termed Cognitive Behavioral Couples Therapy), since evidence indicates that distressed couples show thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that exacerbate dysfunctional patterns. ...

Dr. Alexandra Solomon, professor of Northwestern University’s popular “Marriage 101” class and author of Loving Bravely, posits that the most important trait of a partner is relational self-awareness. People with this quality can talk about how past relationships shaped them, identify their feelings instead of merely acting on them, view relationship issues as a combination of “me” and “you” stuff, and listen to feedback in a healthy way. You can assess this in a date by looking at (1) their stimulus-response process in frustrating moments (do they fight, flee, freeze, or study the moment and respond in a composed way?), and (2) how they talk about past relationships — do they see events in black and white, or are they aware of the nuances of context? Is there blame and/or shame? Do they play the victim or do they take shared responsibility? Do they cast other people as villains, losers, or fools? Is there a focus on growth? The canonical financial disclaimer that “past performance may not be an indicator of future results” does hold – but how we process our past may be one of the most telling indicators of how we will function in current or future relationships.

Many of us are familiar with the political horse trading that’s part and parcel of the modern romantic relationship. We do Thankgiving with your parents, and Christmas with mine. I take the dog to the groomers, you mow the lawn this week. This kind of trading is an example of an exchange norm in a relationship. In academic papers, an exchange norm is typically contrasted with a communal norm. The exchange norm, while sometimes very convenient, may not be optimal. Indeed, much of the book 80/80 Marriage by Nate and Kaley Klemp deals with how to move away from the idea of fairness (a key requirement for a successful exchange) to a relationship defined by radical generosity and a spirit of shared success. One argument they make that it’s often impossible to draw an equivalence relationship between the things being traded – how many kitchen countertop wipe-downs are equal to one trip to the dog groomer? The subjectivity inherent in the valuations rendered by each side makes this kind of exercise fraught. ...

The ability to express your frustrations in a mutually non-triggering way is a core skill in relationships. In this post, I’m doing a high-level comparison of three models for interpersonal communication that I’ve come across: Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication (NVC) model as presented in the book by the same name, Nate and Kaley Klemp’s Reveal and Request (R&R) model explained in their book The 80/80 Marriage, and the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) model developed by the Center for Creative Leadership. ...

On her wedding day, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that she was given this sage piece of advice by her mother-in-law: “In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” (And I would add, a little forgetful!) But no matter how deaf – or forgetful – we may be, transgressions big and small are part of any meaningful long-term relationship. And consequently, the ability to apologize for these transgressions is a vitally important skill for relational wellness.1 ...

In his book Wired for Love, therapist and clinician Stan Tatkin introduces the notion of a couple bubble, which is a “mutually constructed membrane, cocoon, or womb, that holds the couple together and protects each partner from outside elements.” It’s essentially a safe zone for the partners, buttressed upon an agreement to put the relationship ahead of other life priorities – a mutual pact to put each other’s well-being, self-esteem and distress relief first – as well a shared vision of relationship, and a concordant approach to navigating life together. In brief, Tatkin describes it as an us against the world mentality. ...