““A small daily task, if it be really daily,
will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.””
Happy Valentine’s week! My hope is that if you’re in a relationship, you took some time to celebrate your love, and express your appreciation for your partner. If you didn’t, it’s never too late.
As a couples therapist, one of the things that I love the most about Valentine’s Day is that it shows me that people can have healthy relationships, when they want to. It’s a day when, in general, people are on their best behavior. They buy gifts and cards for one another, they set aside dedicated time where they give each other their undivided attention, they regulate their moods and try not to fight, they try to be warm, soft, patient, and loving. Some couples even (wait for it….) have sex. Sounds like a pretty amazing day right? I think so.
But if you go back through the list of things I just mentioned, none of them are particularly “special” or labor intensive. They are the things we should already be doing, every day. You’ve probably noticed that so far this blog has not been about building skills or providing tools for a healthy relationship. That’s intentional. We’ll get to the skills, I promise. It’s not difficult to find blogs and articles filled with very useful relationship skills. Instead, the focus thus far has been on mindset building and motivation. What Valentine’s Day shows me, and should prove to you, is that you already have the skills. You just choose to use them selectively.
If you didn’t have the skills you probably wouldn’t be in a relationship. Imagine if during the first couple of months of being with your partner you behaved in some of the ways you do now? What if your partner saw your temper on the first couple of dates? Would there have been more? Probably not. It’s not that you didn’t have a temper. It’s that you knew better than to show it. You knew that behaving that way would potentially ruin your chances of establishing a relationship with your partner. What if early on you said some of the things you say to your partner now, or used “that tone” that oozes of irritation and contempt? Would your relationship have blossomed? Definitely not.
So why do we think we can get away with those behaviors now? If a behavior doesn’t cultivate the development of a relationship early on, it likely doesn’t facilitate the maintenance of a relationship once it’s established. It’s not that people don’t have the skills. It’s that people don’t use them.
During my first session with clients I often bring up the concept of low hanging fruit. The “easy stuff”. I ask the couple to think about their relationship and identify:
1) What are some things you know you are doing right now that are not in the best interests of your relationship (e.g. name calling, working too much, selfishness, withholding attention or affection, etc.)?
2) What are some things you are not doing that you know you should if you want to have a healthy relationship (i.e. basically all the things you did for Valentine’s Day)?
Most couples reach out to me for help dealing with what they consider to be complex relationship dynamics. Most of the time, it’s really just low hanging fruit. It’s amazing how once the low hanging fruit is taken care of, the challenges that used to seem impossible, don’t look or feel nearly as overwhelming as they did before.
The acts of love, affection, admiration, and appreciation you do every day matter so much more than the grandiose acts you do occasionally throughout the year. As John Gottman says, it’s the small things, often, that are responsible for the making your relationship the best it can be.
You did it on February 14th. That’s great. I’m proud of you. Enjoy it. But that was only practice for tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day after that. Day by day we build our lives and day by day we work on becoming better, together. You got this!
Come back every Monday for my latest post.
Have a topic you’d like to hear about? Email me at Drjblair@gmail.com