Filling the Emotional Bank Account - Part 2

Have you been making bids for connection with your partner this past week? Do you have any idea what I’m talking about? If not, be sure to check out last week’s post where I discussed the Emotional Bank Account, and reciprocating bids for connection as a way to make deposits. 

This week I’m going to give you three more ways to make those deposits. So without further ado, let’s just dive right in. 

The second way to make deposits into the Emotional Bank Account is by speaking your partner’s Love Language.

Have you heard of The 5 Love Languages? It’s a great book, and an awesome concept by Gary Chapman. He teaches couples about the different ways to give love and to show love in relationships. 

If you haven’t read the book, I’ll give you the quick Cliff’s Notes version: We all have ways that we give love and ways that we interpret love, and many times those two things are different, which is why it is important for us to understand the different languages.

The Five Love Languages are: 

• Gifts: you interpret your partner loves you when they give you gifts

• Quality Time: you interpret your partner loves you when they spend time with you 

• Words of Affirmation: you interpret your partner loves you when they give you verbal compliments

• Physical Touch: you interpret your partner loves you when they are physically affectionate with you 

• Acts of Service: you interpret your partner loves you when they go out of their way to do things for you such as making you a lunch, cleaning up around the house, etc. 

If you haven’t already, you can go online to 5lovelanguages.com and take the quiz for free, and find out which one you most closely identify with. You also want your partner to take the quiz so that you can begin speaking one another’s love languages. When you show love in a way that your partner can hear, the results are so amazing! You feel heard and understood, and your connection will increase. 

A third way to make deposits into the Emotional Bank Account is by creating a culture of appreciation in your home.

What I mean by this is, letting your partner know that you appreciate the little things they do and say. 

It can be easy to point out the things they aren’t doing, and criticism can cloud the relationship, which is the opposite of what you want your partner to feel. By creating a culture of appreciation you are putting the things you appreciate at the forefront. Practice saying thank-you for the little things, let your partner know they are seen, and make deposits into the Emotional Bank Account. 

The fourth way to make deposits into the emotional bank account is by nurturing your friendship.

We give our friends an awful amount of grace, but many times we aren’t so graceful with our partner. 

For example, if you are going to meet a friend for a drink or coffee, and while you’re on your way your friend calls with an emergency, and says they aren’t going to be able to make it, typically you’d say, “ok, I hope everything is ok, and we’ll catch up next week.” 

However, if you had plans to meet with your partner and you get a similar call, you may not be so nice in your response. (You can check out this post where I go more in-depth about this concept.) 

I always ask the couples I work with what they are fighting about. When I hear responses like, “we fight over stupid little things,” or “we don’t even really know what starts the fights, they just seem to escalate,” my next questions are about ways they may or may not be nurturing their friendship. 

When the friendship comes first, it’s easy to give grace, be forgiving, and not sweat the small stuff. If you’re looking for ways to nurture your friendship, think back to when you were first dating - what did you two like to do together? Get back to those things, or try new things. Get on Groupon or LivingSocial and find some new date ideas. Get out of your comfort zones together, laugh, and reconnect. This is the best way to build trust and connection. 

If you and your partner seem to be missing the mark when it comes to filling the Emotional Bank Account, I’d love to hear from you. You can set up a phone consultation and we can talk about ways couples therapy might benefit you.

Filling the Emotional Bank Account

I hope you’ve never had the experience of walking up to the ATM and attempting to withdraw cash, only to be denied because your balance is too low...womp, womp. It happened to me once as a broke college student in my 20’s, and I can recall vowing to never let it happen again - the feeling was just so disheartening! I also hope this doesn’t happen to you in your relationship. 

The emotional bank account is a lot like a regular bank account - if there’s nothing in it, there’s nothing to withdraw. When there’s nothing to withdraw, attempting to make a withdrawal tends to create more issues. 

Let me give you an example: Joe is down and out on his luck, his bank account is overdrawn, and he’s been late a few times to work recently. He’s driving to work, and unfortunately he gets a flat tire. He starts to panic. He knows he’s already been late, and his boss has been on his back, so he is anxious about having to call in with this emergency that is going to make him late, yet again. Not only is he going to be late again, he is going to have to call his brother and ask him for some help since he doesn’t have the money to fix his tire at the moment.

A flat tire is a nuisance. It’s not something we like dealing with, but it’s also not the end of the world. It’s something most people have experienced at least once in their lives. Typically you just get it fixed and move on. 

When you don’t have deposits in the emotional bank account, your experience can be much like Joe’s. Something small may come up - a spat, a conflict, a tough decision that you and your partner need to navigate, but when there’s nothing to draw from to offset this difficulty, it can lead to bigger issues. Suddenly this small inconvenience turns into a snowball of conflict and you find yourselves bringing up all of the past arguments you’ve had, and a rush of negative feelings comes in. Something small becomes something difficult and takes much longer to recover from than necessary. 

So how do you make deposits into the emotional bank account? 

I’m so glad you asked! ;)

One of the best ways to make a deposit in the emotional bank account is by reciprocating bids for connection from your partner. 

A bid for connection is very simple, and we are continuously making them throughout the time we spend with our partner. Put simply, a bid for connection is any time you reach out to connect to your partner. When you walk into a room and say hi, when you point out something you see out the window, or comment on your sister-in-law’s latest facebook post. 

As human beings we are wired for connection, and we especially want to connect to our partners in our romantic relationships. But when we make a bid for connection, we expect a response, and that response is when our partner either turns towards us, or turns away from us. 

Turning towards and turning away doesn’t mean you necessarily have to physically turn towards or away from your partner, but the feeling is the same. If your partner looks out the window and says, “wow, there’s a lot of birds outside!” In that moment you can say, “oh, wow,” (turn towards him/her), or you can keep scrolling on your phone (turn away). 

Dr. John Gottman says that we need a 5:1 ratio to keep our relationships healthy. So for every time you turn away and don’t reciprocate your partner’s bid for connection, you need to turn towards them five times. 

Bids for connection happen really fast, and so you must be cognizant of whether or not you’re reciprocating and turning towards your partner. When we don’t keep this 5:1 ratio and don’t turn towards our partner, it leads to feelings of separation and loneliness. 

Now that I’ve given you something to think about, and one way to make deposits into the emotional bank account, go out and pay attention to your partner’s bids for connection! Next week I’ll share a couple more ways to make those deposits. Or if you’re impatient and want all of the answers now (you’re my kinda person), you can check out my youtube video here where I share 4 ways to make deposits into the emotional bank account and keep your relationship healthy. 

If you have questions, or are having difficulty feeling like your emotional bank account is full, please reach out to me! I’m always happy to answer your questions, or provide you with a free phone consultation to see if therapy is the next best step for you and your partner. 

It’s not about the F*%$&@ Dishes

In the last 10 years in my work as a therapist I’ve heard couples argue about some of the most serious issues. I’ve also heard an equal amount of arguments over the most ridiculous things. The most common, yet benign argument, is over housework. 

John Gottman says that 69% of marital problems are perpetual issues that will never be solved. This means that you really need to figure out a way to keep the peace and ride the waves of the perpetual problems.

When couples come to my office and I bare witness to their arguments over minute things like housework it can be incredibly telling about the state of their relationship. It’s rarely about the dishes, the dirty clothes, or your partner’s decision to move the furniture around without consulting you first. 

When people dig their heels in and fight tooth and nail over who doesn’t clean up after themselves I think to myself, 1) who cares about the dishes?? and 2) what’s this really about? And those are things that I will quickly verbalize.

99.9% of the time when I call couples out on what they’re arguing about they will admit to me that it’s really not about the dishes.

In order to get there I ask questions like, what’s really under your ager over the dishes, why is this so important to you, and what feeling or thought comes up for you when you see your partner’s dirty dish in the sink?

That’s when I hear the translation: “you’re not on my team,” or, “you don’t have my back,” or “I feel like I’m just here to clean up after you (which translates to: we aren’t spending any quality time together).”

I’ll be honest with you – for the last 8 years of my marriage one of our perpetual problems has also been housework (which is why I finally hired a housekeeper).

I call this the dirty sock test (because that’s our issue): On any given day as I am picking up around the house I can find my husband’s dirty black socks strewn around like I’m on an Easter egg hunt. I know this about him – he sits down, removes his socks, and kicks them to the side, and there they stay until he or I come around and clean up. I’ve spent 9 years living with this man, I know that’s his habit, we all have them and I know I’m far from perfect – we said for better or worse, right?

But if I happen to be picking up the house and I bend down to pick up a few dirty socks and also happen to find myself whispering expletives under my breath, I know that my love tank is empty and he hasn’t been speaking to me in my love language, and I it’s time to ask for what I need. What I might think I need is for him to pick up his damn socks, but what I truly need is much more than that (it's usually quality time). 

Nobody gets that angry over a pair of dirty socks (or dishes, or furniture, or tardiness) unless there’s something under that anger - the socks just happen to be the blister on the surface.

So when you’re ready to snarl, retreat to your corner, send a snarky text or give an obvious eye roll, it’s time to check yourself and ask, what’s this really about?

Another way to think about this is to ask yourself, “if my best friend left their socks behind, (left a dish in the sink, or was late for plans) would I blow up?” More than likely it would just roll off your back and you wouldn’t think twice about it.

We give our friends a great deal of grace. But when you aren’t nurturing your friendship with your partner its easy to fight about the little things.

So what’s it really about? Are you resentful over something that’s missing in your relationship? Those conversations might be more difficult to have, but I’m happy to help. You might not get over those perpetual problems in marriage, but when you’re free from resentment it makes it so much easier to be friends - even if they don’t get around to washing their dishes a couple times a week. You can click here to book a consultation with me and we can talk about how couples therapy might help. 

To ask, or not to ask?

“Every time she asks me who I was talking to it puts me on the defense.”

“I can’t do anything without being questioned!”

“He has the password to everything, I am an open book.”

These are some of the things I hear in sessions with couples who are trying to rebuild trust in their relationships. They come to me after they’ve discovered their partner has been unfaithful, and they are devastated and wanted to know what the next steps are.

After I help them through their initial crisis phase, we talk about rebuilding trust, and what that’s going to look like going forward. I’ve heard many creative solutions to this from wary spouses who have been cheated on, and sometimes they are exhausted with the constant checking they are doing.

Checking the emails, checking the texts, checking the location of their phone and making sure it matches up to their story. How long should it take to get home from the grocery store? Is that story about having to stay later at work even true?

This can become the reality in the aftermath of an affair, and quite frankly I too become exhausted just listening to all the extra lengths people go to in order make sure their spouses are being truthful.

But the honest truth is, if your partner wants to cheat, they will cheat.

You can’t affair-proof your relationship.

I know that can be incredibly difficult to hear for some.

But it can also be relieving when you really break it down. The truth is, no amount of checking is going to keep them faithful, so you can stop driving yourself crazy doing so.

In the initial stages after an affair has occurred it is important to negotiate boundaries. No contact with the affair partner, checking in frequently, and giving up passwords for devices if that’s what makes you feel better at the time.

However, trust is truly built on the interactions you have with one another after you decide to stay together. Trust is built on faith, and faith must sometimes be blind.

I often tell partners who have strayed, if you place even a tenth of the energy you put into your affair into your marriage, imagine the happiness you can have in this relationship. There’s a good amount of reconfiguring, time stolen, and effort put into meeting an affair partner. Imagine if you did that with your partner?

It’s easy to get defensive as the questions are asked over and over, but if you’ve strayed then you need to understand it’s not necessarily about your partner wanting to get a different answer from you. It’s really about them having gone through trauma and wanting to regain some sense of normalcy.

The person they trusted most and likely didn’t think was capable of cheating broke their trust, and so they are trying to regain their bearings and in some ways, their sense of control.

If you are the partner asking the questions, I suggest you ask yourself this: Do you want to know the answer to that question, or do you want your partner to know that you have this question?

Those two things are very different. It may seem like you want the answers to all your questions, but if you take a step back and really think about it, are the answers really helpful to you? Once you receive the information you can’t go back, and you can’t “un-see” the images that will float through your mind.

I’ll ask you again – do you want to know the answer to your question? Or do you just want your partner to know that you have this question?

You may want your partner to know that you have questions about how they were able to sneak away and make time for their affair. This question is different then, “when did it happen?” or “did you do it in the car? In the office? In our home?”

Similarly you may want to have access – phone, computer, and email passwords. Having access doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be checking daily. It’s really about your partner’s willingness to give you the passwords and access that means all the difference.

If you’re having difficulty navigating your way through reestablishing trust with your partner in the aftermath of an affair, I’d love to help. You can click here and schedule a phone consultation that’s totally free and we can talk about how therapy might help one or both of you through the recovery process. 

Have you lost, YOU?

What happens when your relationship becomes all about US? When everything revolves around the collective of the two of you? Or if you’re a parenting couple, what happens when everything becomes about the kids?

I’ll tell you that so many of my clients come to see me because they are having difficulty in their long-term relationships. The number one thing they name as the issue is, “communication.”

While that may seem like the biggest issue on the surface of the relationship as I work to dig and peel back the layers of what’s happening for many couples, it becomes apparent to both them, and me, that communication is the issue, but the reason they are unable to communicate quickly becomes the focus.

One of the reasons I find that people are unhappy is because they’ve just lost touch with themselves.

In the beginning of a relationship they say they completely knew who they were, but after years of being with the same person and many times after having kids, they start to forget.

Conversations become logistical – What time are you coming home? Can we fit in that dinner with friends next Friday? What’s your schedule like tomorrow?

While those conversations are important because - hello, we need to eat and end up in the same places to even have a relationship, it becomes apparent that the conversations that brought you together, the ones that involved depth and feeling have dwindled.

You might be saying, “we’ve gotten those all out of the way, there’s no need for them anymore,” but I beg to differ.

Especially if you’ve been in a long-term relationship, you’ve grown and changed since you first began that relationship. You might have attained all of those goals you once dreamed of, and since created new ones.

Or maybe since you’ve obtained them you’ve just been coasting, and in that case it’s time to create new ones. But it’s easy to fall into a rut and that’s where many people feel like they’ve lost themselves.

It’s crazy to sit back and think, “damn I did everything I said I would – we have the house, the career, the kids,” whatever it was that you dared to dream together. Maintaining the career, the kids, the house then becomes very routine, and you lose touch with each other – at least that’s what I hear more times than not.

Monotony has a way of killing that spark that leads to dreaming and deep conversations.

Assess your relationship today. You might be having difficulty communicating, but what’s under that? Is there just nothing to talk about aside from the logistics? That’s a mundane and frustrating place to be.

If you’re raising your hand and feeling like you’re in that camp you’re so not alone! It happens in even the best of relationships. So of course I’m going to challenge you to start dreaming again, and start sharing those dreams with your partner.

But in order to get that part of you back you have to change things up.

What did you once love that you’ve just stopped doing? Did you play on a sports team? Did you get your creative juices flowing on canvas? Was the gym once your retreat? Think about what used to make you feel like you, and then make time to get back to it.

Time might be short, and maintaining your life might seem like it sucks all of your energy, but I guarantee that if you don’t overthink it, and just get back on that horse you’ll see how that benefits you and your ability to show up for your partner. After a while you’ll get back your ability to dream and share those dreams like you once used to.

If you feel like you’re in a rut and don’t see the way out, I’d love to chat with you and see how I can help. You can check my schedule here and we can hop on the phone for a short chat about how we might be able to work together to get you back on track. I’d love to hear from you!