Episode 13: How To Have a Healthy Relationship Right Now
If you’ve got love on the brain, and you’re crazy in love, but it’s killing you softly, this one’s for you! This week we’re talking about relationships: The struggles couples are facing right now, communication strategies to help improve things, and what we’ve learned about our own relationships in quarantine!
Couples are navigating totally new and unprecedented stressors in their relationships right now, whether they are stuck quarantining together 24/7, isolating far apart in a distanced relationship, dealing with parenting, or coping with financial and career stress. And it’s more important than ever to come at these new challenges as a team, to have super strong communication, and to still find ways to enjoy a fun and loving relationship together.
We called in relationship therapist Liz Earnshaw, who helps her clients and hundreds of thousands of social media followers develop healthier relationships everyday. Liz is a licensed marriage and family therapist and founder of A Better Life Therapy in Philadelphia. She helps couples through issues like betrayal, grief, loss, and trauma, while teaching the art of communication. You also might’ve seen her on Instagram where she shares incredibly valuable relationship advice and therapy strategies on her account @lizlistens.
Read on for Part 1 of our relationship deep dive, and tune back in for Part 2 of the episode in two weeks, where we chat about managing conflict and more communication tips! Here’s Liz’s advice for successfully navigating your relationship, so you can have a happy partnership no matter what’s going on in the world right now!
How can you maintain a healthy relationship when you’re dealing with long distance?
When it comes to long distance relationships, especially during COVID, Liz recommends three strategies that you can do as a couple to help your relationship thrive:
1. Find ways to stay ritualized with each other.
Since you may not be able to plan your next visit, what else can you depend on to keep the love going? Liz suggests creating rituals such as every Friday night at 6pm you watch a movie together virtually, or every morning you send each other a ‘Good Morning’ text. Find ways to create fun, reinforcing routines together and then be super diligent at following through with them.
2. Be responsive. “If you’re really far apart you need extra responsiveness than you would if you were together,” says Liz. “You don’t get to see the non-verbal responses, the non-verbal signals. You don’t see the person passing by your office down the hallway, and you don’t really know if they’re there.” Liz recommends finding realistic ways for you both to create as much secure attachment as you can, such as messaging each other back promptly when apart so your partner knows you’re there. And if one partner is voicing their concerns or stresses about the relationship, it helps if the other partner validates their concerns and is verbally responsive to any stress their partner may be going through. “Giving them some validity to their experience is important,” Liz says.
3. Find ways to still dream together. Even though it’s hard to plan trips and fun future activities right now, you can still find ways to dream together, Liz reminds us. “We are living in survival mode mostly right now, but the thing that makes life feel good and beautiful is being out of that...you might not know when you’re going to take that vacation, but can you still send emails back and forth about how beautiful Iceland is.”
How can couples thrive when self-isolating together 24/7?
If you’re living with your partner right now, Liz notes that a lot of the same advice still applies. Dreaming together and creating rituals is still so important, and creating time that is just relationship-time and not work-time is important, says Liz.
The biggest thing to keep in mind when you’re spending a lot of time together is how respectful you are being of one another. Liz recommends thinking about your relationship as if you were roommates: How you would want to be treated, and how would you treat your roommate? “[In] normal times you might only see each other a few hours a day, and the little quirks of leaving a sock somewhere or forgetting about the dishes is not a big deal because you’re in the house for three hours,” says Liz. “But if you’re in your house all day long with another person and you’re not showing manners towards each other, that’s going to be very problematic. It’s going to light a fuse that might be very long, but eventually will become very short.”
Another helpful tip to remember when you’re cooped up with your boo, is that responsiveness is still super important. If your partner is experiencing stress and you have too much on your plate to help them, instead of dismissing them, Liz recommends having an open and honest conversation with your partner so they know that now is not a good time, and establishing in advance what that conversation looks like so feelings aren’t hurt. Liz suggests starting a polite conversation such as, “Hey babe, when we’re both stressed can we agree that if one of us can’t hear it, this is what we’ll say…”.
How couples can use this time to reconnect and improve their relationship
Sometimes the best place to start is reconnecting with yourself first. “It’s actually much easier to be intentional about connecting when you also know the ways in which you’re going to get your own time,” says Liz. “If people don’t have their own free time then it starts to bleed into connection time.” Carving out time for you will make the time that you spend with your partner much more intentional, and intentionality can be key for quality time spent together. Pick the times that are relationship times, and give your partner all of your attention without distractions.
How can you communicate better with your partner, especially during a conflict
We’ve all heard that communication is key to a healthy relationship, but communicating effectively while in an argument is what can make or break a healthy relationship. Liz recommends learning about The Four Horsemen, a term coined by psychologist and relationship researcher, Dr. John Gottman. Dr. Gottman has been studying couples for almost four decades, and has revolutionized the study of marriage by identifying couples who are “Masters” or “Disasters” at navigating the Four Horsemen in a relationship: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness and Stonewalling. “Once you see these things in your relationship, you really want to figure out how [you] can shift out of them,” warns Liz.
But here’s the good news: “In all of his research, he found that people can change. A couple who is using all of these things and has become a Disaster can become a Master if they replace their behaviours,” says Liz. Here’s what Liz had to say about identifying the Four Horsemen and the the antidote to each one:
Criticism: You can recognize Criticism if you or your partner take a problem and place it inside of the other person. “You can catch yourself being critical if you are using the words “always” or never,” notes Liz.
Example: You come home from work and you’re upset that there are dishes in the sink. The problem is the dishes and how the dishes are being handled, but if you’re being critical you might say to your partner, “You are always sitting on the couch when I get in the door!”
The Antidote: Liz recommends replacing Criticism with something called A Gentle Start Up. “You start the conversation gently, because the research shows that the first three minutes of a conversation determine the direction.”
Example: Instead of criticizing your partner for not doing the dishes, you can start by saying, “Babe, can we talk? When I come in at the end of the day and see dishes in the sink, it makes me feel stressed and frustrated, and I need us to come up with a solution.”
Defensiveness: You can recognize Defensiveness if you or your partner victimize yourselves, and reverse the blame on each other when you are in an argument.
Example: If you’re being defensive, your response to your partner criticizing you about the dishes might be, “Well when do you expect me to clean the dishes? I was busy all day while you were out. And when are YOU going to take your car to get fixed? You said you would do that last week!”
The Antidote: The best way to combat Defensiveness is to learn how to take responsibility for your part.
Example: Instead of finding ways to turn the argument on your partner when they have criticized you about the dishes, Liz suggests to take responsibility for the smallest part that is true. “This might look like saying, ‘You are right. The sink is a disaster’ or ‘I hear you. I know you’re tired that the house is a mess right now and you’re right I didn’t clean the dishes’. The key is owning the piece that you are responsible for.”
Stonewalling: Stonewalling occurs “when somebody gets so flooded in a conversation, and too many emotions come up for them that their body actually physically shuts down,” says Liz. When Stonewallers are hooked up to machines, they often have a heart rate that’s elevator to 110 beats per minute or more, and the body releases the same hormones as when it’s in fight or flight mode. “Their body just shuts down and they can’t access the part of their brain that allows for conversation. They can only access the part that will let them run away.”
Example: You can recognize Stonewalling in your partner if they are withdrawing from or avoiding the argument. Liz also notes that you may notice that your partner is kicking their foot nervously, or they cross their arms across their body and have a blank stare, because they are psychologically trying to soothe themselves.
The Antidote: The best way to combat Stonewalling is learning how to Self-Sooth, says Liz. Taking a moment to tell your partner, “I’m feeling very flooded. I don’t know what’s going on. I love you, I just need a break,” will allow you to come back to things when you’re in a better state to work it out constructively. “Letting the other person know that you love them and letting them know that you’re still there is an antidote to Stonewalling,” says Liz.
Contempt: The final and fourth Horsemen is the most detrimental of them all. “When there is Contempt in a relationship, it’s really a sign that the relationship is in a harmful space. It is criticism supercharged and it can verge on abuse or become abuse,” warns Liz.
Example: Liz notes that Contempt shows up when we have “superiority in our voice, condescension, belittling, and we do things that hit below the belt.” Another way to recognize contempt is by noticing your partner’s facial expressions. “It’s the only unilateral facial expression,” explains Liz, “When we have contempt we only use one side of our face...when people feel contempt they cannot hide it. It’s very powerful.”
The Antidote: You can combat Contempt by getting clear on what you’re really upset about. Is there a deep rooted betrayal or resentment that has turned into Contempt? This one requires a lot of deep work to recognize what triggers you and what you need to work on personally so that you can still treat your partner with respect. Gottman’s research also recommends combating Contempt by reminding yourself of your partner’s positive qualities and finding gratitude in them.
“[Understanding these] is a great adult hack because once you know it’s only four behaviours [that] are not going to do any good to your relationship, it’s a lot easier to pick them out,” notes Liz. If you recognize when you or your partner are showing signs of the four behaviours, you can make shifts to combat them. “Doing those little shifts can make huge differences in the way that you communicate.”
How to handle the general uncertainty of the current economy, workforce and state of the world as a team
Stressful times are either going to bring you and your partner together, or serve as the fuse that leads to what Liz calls ‘The Big Bang’. “[Couples] are going to have this amazing experience with each other, of coming together during a stressful, traumatic event. And they are going to look back at this as something that is an anchor to them [and] created really strong roots to their relationship,” says Liz. “And then there are other couples that are going to experience what I like to call ‘The Big Bang’, which is when there is a really stressful experience and your partner doesn’t respond very well, or you don’t respond well as a couple, and even though it doesn’t cause the end of the relationship in that moment, it’s kind of like The Big Bang where over time the relationship is going to go extinct. Because the pain of how something was responded to when you really needed your partner isn’t overcome.”
To avoid ‘The Big Bang’, Liz recommends creating secure attachments with your partner. Ask yourself: “How are you showing your partner that you’ve got their back and that you are their ally?”
And on the flipside, we also need to be very mindful of how we are bringing ourselves into our relationships, notes Liz. It’s important to lean on your partner in times of stress, but it’s just as important to recognize the impact that it can have on our partner over time. Liz suggests to find other outlets so that you can balance being there for your partner and also being there for yourself. Things like journaling, reading, talking to friends or speaking with a therapist are healthy ways to cope if your partner needs a break.
We hope that our convo with Liz helps you and your partner deal with whatever life throws at your relationship! Stay tuned for Part 2 with Liz two weeks from now where we dive into setting boundaries, overcoming power struggles and more!
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