Week 2 - Lesson 7

A part of a solid marriage foundation does not get much publicity. It is the marriage friendship. I love the signs and memes that show “I Married My Best Friend.” Research shows that couples that have great foundational friendship weather harsh marital storms far greater than those who do not.

Consider the best friends you have. When you are together, you probably give each other a lot more slack than you do your spouse. The way you treat your friends is probably different than how you treat your partner. Marriage is a special relationship and one where you need to find a balance between the unique aspects of marriage and that of your best friends.

In this lesson, I will examine the six key elements of the marriage friendship.

#1 - The Love Map

Pull up a Google map of the area you live in. It will probably include the road numbers, exit numbers, parks, and terrain. As you drill down, you’ll discover neighborhoods, museums, hotels, restaurants, shopping centers, and area attractions. Click on a button, and you can be taken to street view where you have a totally different perspective of the street you are viewing.

The love map is very much like Google maps. It is everything you know about your spouse. While dating, you spent a lot of time learning about your love interest. You asked a lot of questions. In the beginning, your questions were probably rather superficial. What is your favorite color, sports team, music, etc.? As the relationship matured, so did the questions. You started asking about dreams, plans, fears, ambitions, motivations, etc.

After marriage, communication tends to dwindle. Life gets in the way, and such communication becomes a luxury.

When you start to think you know all there is to know about your partner - you haven’t scratched the surface.

As the year's progress, we go through a lot of changes, physically, mentally, spiritually, in our careers, with our friends, where we live, our ambitions, fears, and a myriad of other things. There is never a time when you can stop learning about your partner.
Happily married couples ALWAYS update their love maps. They never shy away from time to talk with one another. Just like with good friends, the more you know about your partner, the more information you will have at your disposal to help you when challenges arise.

Such information is not just the surface info, the who, what, when, and where. It is important to delve into the “why.” 

Constantly building the love map is essential to developing a great friendship with your spouse, it is essential for a strong marriage foundation.

#2 – The Love Bank

Similar to a physical bank, the love bank is a virtual bank that holds feelings of love. When your partner says or does something that helps you feel loved, a love bank deposit is made. When your partner says or does something that helps you feel less loved, a love bank withdrawal is made.

The outstanding balance of your love bank is a critical measurement that reflects the quality of your marriage.

Just as your financial bank statement is an easy measurement to see how you are doing financially, your love bank balance is an easy measurement of the love in your life.

How much love do you feel from your partner? Are you overflowing with love, scraping bottom, or overdrawn? Your answer is the balance of your love bank.

Each partner has a love bank. Each has a love bank balance.

What do you think is your partner’s love bank balance?

Each balance is important. Unless you have a good understanding of your partner, a good love map, it will be hard to guess what their love bank balance is.

Just as in a financial bank, it is important to make regular deposits and fewer withdrawals.

We all have multiple love bank accounts. You have a love bank account for your spouse. You have a love bank account for family members, friends, etc.

When it comes to love, it is important to realize that you don’t have to get all your love just from your spouse! You have other sources of love to from which you can tap into when the need arises.

#3 – Positive Intent

When I get together with friends, we can act up pretty good. There always comes the time when we give each other a lot of grief. Of course, it’s all in good fun. Someone can tell me with a serious look on their face that I’m full of BS. In a moment or two, the two of us break out in laughter, slapping each other on the back and go on to tease someone else.
In many cases if you were to tell your spouse they are full of BS, they might not take so kindly to it. Why the difference? Besides having the expectation that loving spouses wouldn’t say those things to one another, even in jest, we also attribute a different intent to those we have the most serious of relationships with.

Happily married couples attribute positive intent with one another. Couples having issues often attribute negative intent.

When you come home, and discover your partner didn’t do a chore or something you expected to be done by that time, do you think negatively about your partner? Do you blame them for not getting things done on time?

Negative intent fills our minds when our blueprint doesn’t match our reality. Negative intent starts us down a negative spiral. It feeds on itself. Once we attribute negative intent, we begin looking for more behaviors that justify the negative intent. Minor things are blown out of proportion, all to justify and rationalize our negative beliefs.

The solution is to fight back the tendency to attribute negative intent, and actively seek out the positive intent.

Going back to our example earlier. You come home to find your husband did not vacuum the floors as he promised. It would be easy to start getting angry. You like a clean house. He promised to get the vacuuming done. He didn’t. To make matters worse, you find him taking a nap on the living room couch with the TV on.

Barring any other complications like company coming over in an hour and you have to make dinner, the best thing to remember is that love and anger cannot exist at the same time.

It would be best not to approach him at that time. Let him continue to nap. Give yourself the gift of time to allow your emotions to calm down. Take a soothing bath. Go for a walk. Exercise. Do something that relieves your stress. Now, start asking yourself quality questions. The questions we ask ourselves can help turn a bad situation into a positive situation.

Instead of asking why he is so lazy or why he didn’t get the job done, you could ask yourself what may have come up for him that didn’t give him the time to get the vacuuming done?

What could have distracted him?

What could have been more important to him than doing the vacuuming?

What is going on in his life that allowed the vacuuming to slip his mind?

Do you see the change in thought process?

It’s not about you and the importance of a clean house to you, but rather about what is going on with your spouse.

Instead of assuming, negatively, that he didn’t vacuum because of a character defect, or to punish you for something, the thought process is to understand him better and what is going on in his life.

The vacuuming, or any household chore, is a surface problem. You can get angry about the surface problem, or you can understand your spouse and build a strong marriage foundation.

Positive intent allows both partners to remain calm with one another and discuss important matters as civil adults.

#4 – Turning Towards

One of the most important findings from Dr. John Gottman and his marriage research is that happily married couples turn towards each other when requested. I’m not talking about physically turning towards one another but rather, giving attention to one another.
You are watching your favorite football team on TV, and your wife asks you if you picked up the cat treats when you were at the store earlier. It might be easy to blow her off and mutter “I think so.” Such a reaction is not giving her the attention she is requesting. The cat is hungry and doing the figure eight between her legs.

Turning towards is a behavior that gives your spouse the attention they are seeking.
Such requests for attention are easy when you are not doing anything special. It matters most when you are busy doing something you want to do, and a request for attention is made. What do you usually do?

Happily married couples turn towards each other far more often than not.

If we are not in the habit of turning towards our spouse, it can result in an awkward or tense situation. We can snap back at such requests for attention, starting an argument or creating bad feelings.

I remember some years ago when I did not turn towards a friend when I should have. I was driving. It was raining outside and took a lot of attention to driving safely. My friend was in the passenger seat talking with her friend in the back seat. They were having quite a conversation. It went on for quite some time. At some point, my mind was very focused on the road when my friend tried to get my attention. All I remember was hearing “Helloooooo, earth to Mark!” It rattled me, and I snapped back with a rather harsh “What?” I did apologize and explained that I was focusing on the road, but the damage was already done, and I did not make a good impression with her friend. I should have done better by also paying attention to their conversation.

Turning towards, or giving attention to your partner when requested, is a clear indicator of how well a marriage is doing. It is a major red flag for marriage professionals when we see one partner dismissing the requests of the partner.

Once again, turning towards is another way you need to take the focus off of yourself and put it on to your partner.

#5 – High Positive to Negative Interaction Ratio

Every interaction you have with your partner is important. Each interaction makes deposits to or withdrawals from their love bank. In times of conflict, happily married couples have a positive to negative interaction rate of 5 to 1. This means that even in times of conflict, they are still nice to one another saying or doing something positive five times as much as they are negative.

What about normal times without conflict? Happily married couples have a positive ratio as high as 20 to 1.

Happily married couples turn towards each other. They may complain, but they don’t criticize. They almost always believe their partner has the best intentions.

For the next 24 hours, simply monitor your positive to negative interaction ratio. Keep it in mind. Once you know the baseline, work to improve it. Don’t respond negatively. Try to phrase thing in the positive. I’ll cover more on how to do this in weeks 3 and 4.

#6 – Expectations

Pause this while you make your list.

Expectations is a very broad topic.

Those expectations sound fair, right?

After all, if your partner did not express love to you, you would have a right to get angry, right?

If your partner cheated on you, you’d have a right to be mad, right?

If your partner didn’t show that they trust you, you have a right to be upset, right?

The marriage relationship is a special relationship. It’s supposed to be a deep bond between two willing partners. Since marriage is such a special relationship, there should be special expectations, right?

I’m suggesting a lot of questions because I need you to think about all of your expectations.

There are other expectations you may have, but perhaps you don’t think of them as expectations.

For example, think about Valentine’s Day. What do you expect from your partner on Valentine’s Day? If they didn’t do “x” you would feel justified in being upset.
What about Mother’s Day? Christmas? Your birthday? Anniversary?

Now, do you see what I’m referring to with all the various types of expectations?

Here’s an example. A wife on Valentine’s Day expects to be taken out for a fancy dinner, a dozen roses, and a box of chocolates. The husband takes his wife to a local restaurant, but it isn’t very fancy. They have to wait 20 minutes to get a table since he did not make reservations. He brings her 6 roses and no chocolates. She gets upset with him because he did not meet her expectations. She’s in a bad mood most of the evening, and he’s wondering what’s wrong since he made an effort to treat her out. He’s hoping for some bedroom activity later, and she’s not having any of that. Tensions are high, and by the end of the evening, they are not talking with one another.

Was she right to get upset? Did he screw up?

In this example, the wife had a strict set of expectations. Here’s a critical question. If he did all that she expected, did he do anything special? Did he do it out of love, or out of requirements? Was it because he wanted to do all that, or only because it was expected of him? What would he have to do to show his real love for her?

These kinds of expectations are a quid-quo-pro, a this for that, a payment for services rendered.

There are really two kinds of expectations.

The expectations of love, trust, not to cheat, etc., are what I call high-priority expectations. High-priority expectations establish specific boundaries for what needs to be done and what cannot be done. There is nothing wrong with these high-priority expectations. High-priority expectations are inherently required for the special relationship of marriage to succeed.

These other kinds of expectations are what I call detrimental expectations. These expectations damage the foundation of a happy marriage. Detrimental expectations should be as few as possible. When there are many detrimental expectations, the spouse under the expectations feels manipulated and controlled. The spouse is not free to exercise free will or make choices. Their actions are because it is what is expected of them, not because they choose to.

Happily married couples are free to decide for themselves what they do or do not do. They can choose their own actions without negative repercussions from the spouse.
Couples that are free to choose their own actions within the boundaries of high-priority expectations see whatever actions their spouse makes as true signs of love.

Imagine the example above if the wife didn’t have those expectations of a fancy dinner, a dozen roses, and a box of chocolates. She comes home from work and the husband arranged for a candlelit dinner at home where he arranged a personal chef to make them her favorite dish. He has a single rose on the table. For dessert, he arranged for the chef to make a chocolate raspberry mousse, her favorite.

Without expectations, she sees this Valentine’s Day as a great expression of his love, creativity, and romance.

Limit the number of detrimental expectations in your marriage. Discuss the high-priority expectations that establish specific boundaries. Break yourself and your partner out of the shackles of expectations and express your freedom to love and romance each other.

Conclusion

The marriage friendship is a special relationship. It is not to be taken lightly. Happily married couples not only love one another, they also like one another. Creating a great friendship solidifies the marriage foundation.