The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (Lesson 7)

I learned two important things from reading about turning toward each other in Gottman's "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work."  The first is that I am uncomfortable listening to others express negative emotion. I always knew I didn't like conflict but I never really realized how often I tend to shut off my husband's need to express negative emotion. Too often I try to stand up for the other person or try to get my husband to see why this negative thing happened or what he could have done to avoid it. These are all things that were specifically mentioned in the chapter to NOT do. Wow! My husband has mentioned to me before that it hurts him when I stand up for the other person, and I try not to, but reading this chapter really gave me some insights into what I'm really doing.
Gottman says that this tendency to turn away from negative emotion is usually rooted in childhood. I had a wonderful childhood, but I must admit there was not a lot of expression of emotions in my home, especially negative ones and especially by my mother. I remember her commenting to me one time that she thought it was really healthy that I let my children know when I was frustrated with something, she never did this. I didn't do this because of any great knowledge of relationships that I had, rather it just came about because I didn't have the self-control to keep all my emotions in like my mother had. My father has a really difficult time saying "I love you."  It's really interesting, I know he loves me, he expresses to me all the time how much he appreciates me and how proud he is of me, but he can't say the words, "I love you!" Even when I say to him as I'm leaving, "Good-bye Dad, I love you," he just responds with, "Thank you, see you soon." So I guess there was some stifling of emotional expression in my home growing up. 
I am determined to become better at supporting my husband and listening to him with an empathic ear, to let him know that I've got his back when things are tough.
The second thing I learned from this chapter was that I sometimes feel suffocated with too much turning towards me. I am so blessed to have a husband that is constantly turning towards me. He loves to run errands with me, help me with dishes, spend the evening with me, and always wants to go to bed with me. Usually, I enjoy these things too, but sometimes I just want my own space. Reading this chapter helped me understand how blessed I am that he is this way, to look at his efforts with appreciation and endearment, but also to discuss the times that I'm feeling like I just need a little bit more independence. 
I have really enjoyed reading this book. I feel that Gottman has a gift to express concepts that I kind of knew already, but didn't know how to specifically communicate them and to live them more fully.

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