When Your Wife Tells You Your Problem is… Your Face
Me: “Honey, I think I’d like to get some glasses. They look cool.”
My wife: “Hmm, I don’t know what could look cool on you. The problem is your face.”
Not my ears, not my nose, or my eyes, but just…my face.
Ah, yes, the glory of marriage.
Now, I had a choice at that point:
a. Get insecure (What is it about my face? Don’t you like it?)
b. Get mad (Where do you get off talking to me like that? I’m (with authority) your husband!
c. Get even (My face? Ha! You should see yours! You call your glasses cool?!?)
d. Laugh it off
Fortunately, in a rare moment of clear man thinking, I opted for option “d”.
I just laughed.
Did you hear what you just said, I asked? My face? The problem with me is my face? Too funny!
When my wife realized what she had said, unintentionally, the laughter started, the apologies flowed, and then we rehashed the humor in it to the point of tears.
Why don’t we always opt for option “d”, though? Why don’t we immediately go there? Why are we so prone to receiving offenses from people when what they say could just as easily be taken the other way and shrugged off?
Dr. John Gottman, of the Gottman Institute, has done some fascinating research into the anatomy of great relationships.
Great relationships, he noted, have a “magic ratio” of positive to negative interactions.
For example, when it comes to relationships in the workplace, there is a “magic ratio” of 3 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction.
When it comes to marriage, however, instead of the ratio going down, it actually goes up- there is a magic ratio of 5 to 1.
What that means is this:
1. Negative emotions are more powerful than positive emotions.
Think about it- it takes, with the person in the cubicle next to you or in the house next door, 3 times more positive interactions just to stay even in the relationship. To get ahead and build great relationships, in other words, try bringing cookies or paying for lunch at least once a week. And, one false word or bad conversation can set you back weeks.
2. The closer the relationship, the more positive deposits must be made.
As people, we end up needing one another just to make it in life. Those who always take, and rarely give- or even worse, those who don’t know they are always taking and never giving- in their closest relationships are burning through people faster than they realize. In other words, don’t take the people closest to you for granted. The people closest to you are the ones who need the best from you the most- just to survive you!
3. When a seemingly innocuous comment is received the wrong way, that’s a clue you are headed to the dreaded “1-1” ratio.
At 1-1, your friendships and even marriage, according to Gottman, are “cascading towards divorce”. If you are feeling shaky about a relationship, or are easily insulted or offended by a particular person, it isn’t likely that the person is doing you harm after harm (although that’s possible, too), it’s that you and that person haven’t experienced enough positive moments together. You may just be treading water in the relationship- and that’s a difficult place to stay, because no one can tread water indefinitely.
I have learned that the people I am the most sensitive around are not “worse” people or “the bad guy”, but people with whom I just don’t have enough positive experiences. I either haven’t invested enough myself or have genuinely experienced too many tough moments with them for whatever reason, with not enough good ones to push ahead. I have come to recognize that when I can’t just “shrug it off”, that’s a signal I and that person need some investment into our relationship- before the account gets bled dry.
How about you? Who is one person you’re having a hard time with right now? Why not shoot them a text, pick up the phone and call, or, even better, yet, buy them an inexpensive gift on amazon.com (the shipping is awesome)?
If you’ll do that, there’s no guarantee it will work- but there is a guarantee that doing nothing won’t. If you and that person have enough “in the bank”, you can make it through anything.
That’s the reason, in other words, I could laugh off from my wife what could really be insulting if someone else had said it to me – it was all the relational and emotional deposits my wife has made in my life.
Well, that and I know my face is kind of a problem.
