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The picture was taken from mindjournal.com\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n 1. LETTING SOME CONFLICTS GO UNRESOLVED<\/strong> Gottman devised the process of \u201cthin-slicing\u201d relationships, a technique where he hooks couples up to a series of biometric devices and then records them having short conversations. Gottman then goes back and analyzes the conversation frame by frame, looking at biometric data, body language, tonality, and specific words chosen. He then combines all of this data together to predict whether your marriage sucks or not.<\/p>\n His \u201cthin-slicing\u201d process boasts a staggering 91% success rate in predicting whether newly-wed couples will divorce within 10 years\u00a0 a staggeringly high result for any psychological research (Malcolm Gladwell discusses Gottman\u2019s findings in his bestselling book, Blink.) Gottman\u2019s seminars also report a 50% higher success rate of saving troubled marriages than traditional marriage counseling. His research papers have won enough academic awards to fill the state of Delaware. And he\u2019s written nine books on the subjects of intimate relationships, marital therapy, and the science of trust.<\/p>\n The point is when it comes to understanding what makes long-term relationships succeed, John Gottman will slam-dunk in your face and then sneer at you afterward.<\/p>\n And the first thing Gottman says in almost all of his books is:\u00a0The idea that couples must communicate and resolve all of their problems is a myth.<\/p>\n In his research of thousands of happily married couples, some of whom have been married for forty plus years, he repeatedly found that most successful couples have persistent unresolved issues, issues that they\u2019ve sometimes been fighting about for decades. Meanwhile, many of the\u00a0unsuccessful\u00a0couples insisted on\u00a0resolving fucking everything\u00a0because they believed that there should never be a disagreement between them. Pretty soon there was a\u00a0void of a relationship, too.<\/p>\n Successful couples accept and understand that some conflict is inevitable, that there will always be certain things they don\u2019t like about their partner, or things they don\u2019t agree with\u2013all that\u2019s fine. You shouldn\u2019t need to feel the need to change somebody in order to love them. And you shouldn\u2019t let some disagreements get in the way of what is otherwise a happy and healthy relationship.<\/p>\n Sometimes, trying to\u00a0resolve a conflict\u00a0can create more problems than it fixes. Some battles are simply not worth fighting. And sometimes, the most optimal relationship strategy is one of live and let live.<\/p>\n 2. BEING WILLING TO HURT EACH OTHER\u2019S FEELINGS<\/strong> When I tell her this, she usually gets pissed off. And as she marches back into the closet to redo everything and make us 30 minutes late, she spouts a bunch of four-letter words (fortunately, they\u2019re in Portuguese) and sometimes even slings a few of them at me.<\/p>\n Men often lie in this situation to make their girlfriends\/wives happy. But I don\u2019t. Why? Because honesty in my relationship is more important to me than\u00a0feeling good all of the time. The last person I should ever have to censor myself with is the woman I love.<\/p>\n Fortunately, I am married to a woman who agrees that we should always be honest. She calls me out on my bullshit sometimes, and it\u2019s one of the most important traits she offers me as a partner. Sure, my ego gets bruised and I bitch and complain and try to argue, but a few hours later I usually come sulking back and admit that she was right and holy crap she makes me a better person even though I hated hearing her truth-telling at the time.<\/p>\n When our highest priority is to always make ourselves feel good or to always make our partner feel good, then more often than nobody ends up feeling good. And our relationships fall apart without us even knowing it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to make something more important in your relationship than merely making each other feel good all of the time. The feeling-good\u2013the sunsets and puppies\u2013they happen when you get the important stuff figured out: values, needs, and trust.<\/p>\n If I feel smothered and want more time alone, I need to be capable of saying that without blaming her and she needs to be capable of hearing it without blaming me, despite the unpleasant feelings it may cause. If she feels that I\u2019m cold and unresponsive to her, she needs to be capable of saying it without blaming me and I need to be capable of hearing it without blaming her, despite the unpleasant feelings it may generate.<\/p>\n These conversations are crucial if we want we maintain a healthy relationship, one that meets both\u00a0people\u2019s needs. Without them, we lose track of one another.<\/p>\n 3. BEING WILLING TO END IT<\/strong> The truth is our standards for what a \u201csuccessful relationship\u201d should be are pretty screwed up. If a\u00a0relationship ends\u00a0and someone\u2019s not dead, then we view it as a failure, regardless of the emotional or practical circumstances present in the person\u2019s lives. And that\u2019s kind of insane.<\/p>\n Romeo and Juliet were originally written as satire to represent everything that\u2019s wrong with young, romantic love and how irrational beliefs about relationships can make you do stupid shit like drink poison because your parents don\u2019t like some girl\u2019s parents.<\/p>\n But somehow, we\u2019ve come to think of the play as a romance. It\u2019s this kind of irrational idealization that leads people to stay with partners who treat them like shit, to give up on their own needs and identities, to make themselves into martyrs who are\u00a0perpetually miserable, to suppress their own pain and suffering in the name of maintaining a relationship \u201cuntil death do us part.\u201d<\/p>\n Sometimes the only thing that can make a relationship successful is ending it at the necessary time before it becomes too damaging. And the willingness to do that allows us to establish the necessary boundaries to help ourselves and our partner grow together.<\/p>\n \u201cShoot me to love you; if I loved myself I\u2019d be shooting you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013 Marilyn Manson We have no reason to\u00a0work on ourselves\u00a0and grow because our partner has to be there no matter what. And our partner has no reason to work on themselves and grow because we\u2019re going to be there no matter what. This all invites stagnation and stagnation equals misery.<\/p>\n 4. FEELING ATTRACTION FOR PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE RELATIONSHIP<\/strong> As much as we\u2019d like to believe that we only have eyes for our partner, biology says otherwise. Once we get past the honeymoon phase of starry eyes and oxytocin, the novelty of our partner can wear off a bit. And unfortunately, human sexuality is partially wired around novelty. I get emails all the time from people in happy marriages\/relationships who get blindsided by finding someone else attractive and they feel like horrible people because of it. But the truth is, not only are we\u00a0capable of finding multiple people attractive\u00a0and interesting at the same time, it\u2019s a biological inevitability.<\/p>\n What\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0an inevitability is our decision to act on the attraction or not. Most of us, most of the time, choose to not act on those feelings. And like waves, they pass through us and leave us with our partner very much the same way they found us.<\/p>\n This triggers a lot of guilt in some people and a lot of irrational jealousy in others. Our cultural scripts tell us that once we\u2019re in love, that\u2019s supposed to be the end of the story. And if someone flirts with us and we enjoy it, or if we catch ourselves having an occasional errant sexy-time fantasy, there must be something wrong with us or our relationship.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s simply not the case. In fact, it\u2019s healthier to allow oneself to experience these feelings\u00a0and then let them go.<\/p>\n When you suppress these feelings, you give them power over you, you let them dictate your behavior for you (suppression) rather than dictating your behavior for yourself (via feeling them and yet choosing not to do anything).<\/p>\n People who suppress these urges are often the ones\u00a0who eventually succumb to them\u00a0and suddenly find themselves screwing the secretary in the broom closet and having no idea how they got there and come to\u00a0deeply regret it\u00a0about twenty-two seconds later.<\/p>\n People who suppress these urges are often the ones who project them onto their partner and become blindingly jealous, attempting to control their partner\u2019s every thought, corralling all of their partner\u2019s attention and affection onto themselves.<\/p>\n People who suppress these urges are often the ones who wake up one day disgruntled and frustrated with no conscious understanding of why, wondering where all of the days went and saying things like, \u201cremember how in love we used to be??<\/p>\n Looking at attractive people is pleasurable. Speaking to attractive people is pleasurable. Thinking about attractive people is pleasurable. That\u2019s not going to change because of our Facebook relationship status. And when you dampen these impulses towards other people, you dampen them towards your partner as well. You\u2019re killing a part of yourself, and it ultimately only comes back to harm your relationship.<\/p>\n When I meet a beautiful woman now, I enjoy it, as any man would. But it also reminds me why, out of all of the beautiful women I\u2019ve ever met and dated, I chose to be with my wife. I see in the attractive women everything my wife has and most women lack.<\/p>\n And while I appreciate the attention or even flirtation, the experience only strengthens my commitment. Attractiveness is everywhere; real intimacy is not.<\/p>\n When we commit to a person, we are not committing our thoughts, feelings, or perceptions of them. We can\u2019t control our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions most of the time, so how could we ever make that commitment?<\/p>\n What we\u00a0can\u00a0control are our\u00a0actions. And what we commit to that special person are those actions. Let everything else come and go, as it inevitably will.<\/p>\n 5. SPENDING TIME APART<\/strong> When we fall in love we develop irrational beliefs and desires. One of these desires is to allow our lives to be consumed by the person with whom we\u2019re infatuated. This feels great\u2013it\u2019s intoxicating in much of the same way cocaine is intoxicating (no, really). The problem only arises when this actually happens.<\/p>\n The problem with allowing your identity to be consumed by a romantic relationship is that as you change to be closer to the person you love, you cease to be the person they fell in love within the first place.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to occasionally get some distance from your partner, assert your independence, maintain some hobbies or interests that are yours alone. Have some separate friends; take an occasional trip somewhere by yourself; remember what made you and what drew you to your partner in the first place.<\/p>\n Without this oxygen to breathe, the fire between the two of you will die out and what were once sparks will become only friction.<\/p>\n 6. ACCEPTING YOUR PARTNER\u2019S FLAWS<\/strong> I love this observation and believe it applies to not just womanizers, but just about anyone who consistently finds themselves in dysfunctional relationships. They either try to make their partner be perfect by \u201cfixing\u201d them or changing them, or they delude themselves into thinking that their partner is already perfect.<\/p>\n This is one of those things that is not nearly as complicated as it appears. Let\u2019s break it down:<\/p>\n Every person has flaws and imperfections. One of the best (and earliest!) expressions of this idea came from Plato in the form of a myth. In his\u00a0Symposium, Plato wrote that humans were originally androgynous and whole. They felt no lack, no uncertainty, and they were powerful, so powerful that they rose up and challenged the gods themselves.<\/p>\n This posed a problem for the gods. They didn\u2019t want to completely wipe out the human race as they\u2019d have no one to rule over, but they also had to do something to humble and distract humanity.<\/p>\n So, Zeus split each human into two, a man and a woman (or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman) and doomed them to spend their brief mortal existence wandering the world looking for their other half, the half that would make them feel whole and powerful again. And this wholeness would come not from two\u00a0perfections\u00a0meeting, but two\u00a0imperfections\u00a0meeting, two imperfections that both complemented and compensated for one another\u2019s shortcomings.<\/p>\n The artist Alex Grey once said that \u201cTrue love is when two people\u2019s pathologies complement one another\u2019s.\u201d Love is, by definition, crazy and irrational. And the best love works when our irrationalities complement one another, and our flaws enamor one another.<\/p>\n It may be our perfections that attract one another in the first place. But it\u2019s our imperfections that decide whether or not we stay together.<\/p>\n ( markmanson.net )<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The picture was taken from mindjournal.com\u00a0 1. LETTING SOME CONFLICTS GO UNRESOLVED There\u2019s this guy by the name of\u00a0John Gottman\u2013he\u2019s like the Michael Jordan of … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[61],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","tag-toxic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":978,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions\/978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThere\u2019s this guy by the name of\u00a0John Gottman\u2013he\u2019s like the Michael Jordan of relationship research. Not only has he been studying intimate relationships for more than forty years, but he practically invented the field.<\/p>\n
\nMy wife spends a lot of time in front of the mirror because she cares about how she looks.\u00a0 Nights before we go out, she often comes out of the bathroom after an hour-long makeup\/hair\/clothes\/whatever-women-do-in-there session and asks me how she looks. She\u2019s usually gorgeous, but every once in a while she tries to do something new with her hair or is wearing a pair of boots that some flamboyant fashion designer from Milan thought were avant-garde. And it just doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
\nRomantic sacrifice is\u00a0idealized in our culture. Show me almost any movie with romance at its center and it\u2019s bound to feature a desperate and needy character who treats themselves like dog shit for the sake of being in love with someone.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cUntil death does us part\u201d is romantic and everything, but when we worship our relationship as something more important than ourselves\u2014more important than our values than our needs and everything else in our lives we create a sick dynamic where there\u2019s no accountability.<\/p>\n
\nOne of the mental tyrannies we face in a non-honest relationship is the situation where any mildly emotional or sexual thought not involving your partner amounts to high treason.<\/p>\n
\nWe all have that friend who mysteriously ceased to exist as soon as they got into their relationship. You see it all the time: the man who meets someone and stops playing basketball and hanging out with his friends, or the woman who suddenly decides she loves every comic book and video game her partner likes even though she doesn\u2019t know how to correctly hold the Xbox controller. And it\u2019s troubling, not just for us but for them.<\/p>\n
\nIn his novel\u00a0The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera says there are two types of womanizers: 1) men who are looking for the perfect woman and can never find her, and 2) men who convince themselves that every woman they meet is already perfect.<\/p>\n
\nYou can\u2019t ever\u00a0force\u00a0a person to change.
\nTherefore: You must date somebody who has flaws you can live with or even appreciate.
\nThe most accurate metric for your love of somebody is how you feel about their flaws. If you accept them and even adore some of their shortcomings her obsessive cleanliness, his awkward social ticks and they can accept and even adore some of your shortcomings, well, that\u2019s a sign of true intimacy.<\/p>\n