February 10, 2011
Gregory Godek’s book “1001 Ways To Be Romantic” lists new and creative ways to spice up your romantic life. Seems kind of interesting, right?
One of the suggestions in the book is to give your partner a locket with your picture in it.
So let me ask you a brief question:
If you haven’t told your partner that you love him or her in years, haven’t sincerely asked about your partner’s hopes and fears in years, nor given out a legitimate complement, is your partner going to appreciate a locket with your picture in it?!?!?!
Probably not.
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When you and your partner have conflict, do you look like a “Dodge Ball” couple, or a “Soccer” couple?
Let me explain the metaphor…
What 35 years of observational research clearly show is that couples who last in the long term are always working to feel like a team. Issues are processed in terms of “How does this affect our team?” and “Are we interacting like members on the same team right now?”
When conflict enters the picture, the question then becomes, what kind of team are you?
Are you a team that kicks a topic around, almost like playfully kicking a soccer ball between both members? This is the atmosphere you want to create when working on conflict. It looks a little like this:
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Let’s talk for a moment about distractibility. More specifically, let’s talk about how attention-deficit 
symptoms impact relationships. This is a very under-studied topic, yet it seems to impact up to 30% of the couples who come to our San Francisco couple’s clinic. Could attention-deficit symptoms actually be the root cause of problems in your relationship? Take a look at this simple checklist/quiz I created:
- Does your partner pay attention perfectly well to new, novel, highly-stimulating, or frightening things, but has a short attention span for less stimulating ideas?
- Is your partner hypersensitive to the environment? Does he or she need earplugs or a fan to provide ‘white noise’ in order to sleep? Does he or she not like being touched, or react negatively if touched the wrong way?
- Does your partner take on a haphazard approach to chores/tasks, increasing the amount of time it takes to get them done? (more…)
Do you feel like some of your conflicts are gridlocked?
When couples are together for a long time they typically learn to become more mellow about one another’s faults. They also become more accepting of one another and communicate that acceptance.
Amazingly, when you accept your partner’s faults, and your partner perceives that you’re more accepting, her or she is also more likely to accept your shortcomings in return. You have to give in order to get something back.
But things don’t always happen that smoothly, right?
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This is a great question, and so I turned to the research literature for some answers. All 20 studies that I read agreed there needs to be more review of this dynamic, but below I present some important findings. The research largely agreed that butch/femme dynamics are not related to relationship satisfaction, and that the butch/femme dynamic is changing due to social influences.
- When you look at butch/femme dynamics and relationship satisfaction, internalized homophobia and discrimination were associated with lower relationship quality and both domestic violence perpetration and victimization. Outness and butch/femme identity were largely unrelated to relationship variables. (Psychology of Women Quarterly, Sep, 2005)
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Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage in California, was just overturned. Many people have been asking us whether marriage really helps gay/lesbian relationships last long term.
Marriage does help same sex relationships. Here’s two important pieces of evidence:
An important article in the Journal of Developmental Psychology in 2003 followed up with Vermont-based couples who went through civil unions from 2000-2002. It compared those unionized couples with a) their gay un-unionized friends’ relationships, and b) their heterosexual married friends, to see how long the unionized couples stayed together.
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