Topic: Relationship satisfaction with mindfulness
ERP 143: How To Increase Relationship Satisfaction With Mindfulness, Part II
Welcome to The Empowered Relationship Podcast, helping you turn relationship challenges into opportunities and setting you up for relationship success. Your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins, is a licensed psychologist and relationship coach who shares valuable tips, tools and resources for you to dramatically improve your relationship.
This podcast is 100% ad-free. To support this show, please subscribe and write a review today. Here is your host.
* * *
Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 143, How To Increase Relationship Satisfaction With Mindfulness. Part I (#142) of the same title, How To Increase Relationship Satisfaction With Mindfulness – if you haven’t checked it out, I encourage you to listen to that episode first.
My intention for that episode is to give you definition, some understanding that you can relate to. Because sometimes when we get definition of a term that we’re maybe not super familiar with, or maybe don’t use very often, sometimes we’re actually practicing it without even know that we’re doing that… So we try to give you some practical examples where you may be already practicing mindfulness and maybe don’t call it mindfulness.
I shared with you that mindfulness essentially is the ability to be focused and present in the current moment. Now, we might listen to that and say, “Yeah, fair enough, that’s easy”, yet myself included know that with the demands of current modern day society, we often feel stressed, overwhelmed and preoccupied, because there’s so much on the plate. What that often lends to is thinking about the next day, planning… And all of that is great, but if we are always in that future-based mindset, we’re essentially missing the moment, and there’s some drawbacks to that.
Similarly, if we are re-living, rehearsing or even ruminating on something that’s already happened, that’s passed… Again, I do believe that learning from our past and debriefing and evaluating what happened, what worked well, what didn’t work well has its purpose, but again, if that’s the place we typically live, again, we’re missing the current moment.
Mindfulness is essentially a skill that we can develop, and that if we put some concerted effort, it has many benefits to us, and that is that we are able to tolerate and meet all range of experience without attaching to it, fighting it, trying to make it different… And if you listened to the series about pain, you’ll remember that part of what compounds the experience of pain is trying to avoid it, or trying to deny it – all the things that we do when we experience pain, rather than trying to meet it with some level of equanimity, which essentially is mindfulness.
So there’s a sense of non-judgment and acceptance with being present with what is, and we’re gonna steer the conversation towards how mindfulness benefits your relationship today.
Before we get started, let’s touch in and revisit the purpose and the intention for the conversations that happen on the Empowered Relationship Podcast. That is that we are in community, in support of one another, becoming better equipped in navigating long-term intimacy, setting ourselves up for success, as we know it will ask of us to grow in certain ways that also invite relationship growth, so that we can, again, have long-lasting intimacy, but also have a really fulfilling, satisfactory relationship… That we feel bonded, and connected, we feel trust, we feel safety, we feel the joy, and when things are difficult, we have the confidence.
Yes, it’s painful, and we know how to meet that pain. We have some support around how to negotiate those really difficult times… And again, if you’ve listened to my podcast, I do my best to bring topics to the show, I also answer listener’s questions, and I interview other experts in the field. I also have my website, that gives you show notes, as well as a transcript, as well articles, and also ways to get in touch with me if you’re wanting to go deeper with your practice with these principles. To access these resources, you can visit my website, DrJessicaHiggins.com.
How mindfulness benefits relationships – there’s a tremendous amount of research that’s coming out; there’s even a meta analysis (a study of other studies) that shows higher levels of mindfulness predict happier and more satisfying relationships, and I’ll put the link to that on the show notes. Again, today’s episode is 143. You can find that on my website, DrJessicaHiggins.com.
A couple general points, and then I’m gonna give you some really specific ways that mindfulness can benefit your relationship. In general, mindfulness helps us keep the relationship fresh… Because if we’re in the moment and we’re focused on our partner in a present way, we’re much more likely to see them with new eyes. They call it a beginner’s mind. Not as if we already know who they are and we already have a sense of what’s going on for them – we are looking at them with curiosity and a fresh perspective.
So often when we have significant amount of time with someone, if we’ve been together for several years – maybe 10 years, 15 years, 20 years or 30 years – it’s really easy to take each other for granted, or get caught up in the expectations of what we know of them… And this is, again, the mind wanting to be efficient. Your partner, if you know them really well and they’re pretty consistent in their behavior, you’re likely to expect them to continue to behave that way. And that’s not a bad thing, but if we don’t complement that with this mindful approach, we’re likely to overlook them and think we already got that figured out.
In relationship, we all long to feel valued, and appreciated and seen, so it really is sad to think about that even in a great relationship that’s stable and consistent that we are prone to taking one another for granted. So if we can increase the level of mindfulness, even moments of this, it can definitely deepen in the intimacy and the connection and satisfaction.
One of the biggest ways that mindfulness benefits relationship, and that has been in my personal experience as well as in my professional experience, coaching and working with couples, is learning how to soothe fears, anxieties and insecurities. Yes, it’s true, our partner and our relationship provides a tremendous amount of love, joy and connection. Why would we be in relationship if we didn’t want those things? Often, we wanna feel that bondedness. However, they also can be a significant source of stress and anxiety, which we’ve talked a lot about if you’ve listened to previous podcasts.
This can be particularly true when we’ve had any previous emotional pain in the way of relationships. That could be early childhood, and how our parents were able to be there for us. Did we trust that our needs were gonna get met? When we were feeling vulnerable, hurt or scared, did we feel safe and trusting that we could turn to our parents for soothing, for nurturing and repair, healing? To know that we were okay, the world was okay, and we would get through it.
On the Empowered Relationship Podcast I’ve talked frequently about how easy it is to get into a place of fear – even unconsciously; we’re not even aware of it – when our partner might look at us in a dismissive way, or speak to us in a way that has a tone, or not show up when they said they were gonna show up, or not follow through with something they were gonna follow through with. These are all just examples of ways in which we could feel hurt, and that we’re much more likely to be reactive and protective if we’ve had injury in the past… Because our nervous system, our amygdala, the very primal part of our brain has kept record and track of those injuries. So we do not trust that our needs are gonna get met, and we do not trust that it’s a safe place, so we are much more likely to get en guard; that flip is switched around being ready to meet that threat.
Sadly, these reactive, protective strategies push our partner away. They don’t actually get “aka I’m hurting, and I want you to see it.” They don’t get the translation. What our protest and our protective strategies look like often will be criticism, or verbal attack, or distancing and shutting down, and those things lead to more pain, defensiveness, disconnect.
Where mindfulness comes into play is if we can – and I’m gonna talk a lot more about that, but if we can learn to suspend that reaction, that impulse to protect, so that we can recognize “Oh, I’m scared. I’m hurting”, and deal with that directly. This allows for us to speak in ways and relate to our partner in ways that are more open and vulnerable, and they’re much more likely to respond to us.
So in essence, learning to deal with our insecurities is probably one of the most important skills in keeping a relationship happy and healthy. I can say that my relationship with my husband, my marriage is stable, fulfilling and happy and healthy, and I give testament to the practice of mindfulness. I don’t know that I would have called it mindfulness necessarily, but as I break this all down, I know that if I would come in hot on my husband if I was upset, or if I attack him, or nitpick him and blame him, it leads to just more difficulty. He doesn’t really know that I’m hurt, he feels defensive, he feels protective, and he might wanna retaliate, and then it’s that vicious cycle that I know that most of us have some taste of.
I have been so committed to observing myself, catching the impulse to wanna make it about him, and have that observation and take ownership of what’s going on for me and my insecurities, my anxieties, and as much as I can own that and reveal that to him, it is transformational.
He meets me, he wants to help, and he is able to really support me, and that’s a very different experience. So I’ve been so committed to this, and as is my husband, that over and over again we are choosing this healthy path… Because both of us have experienced pain in the past. If we were not committed and diligent about this practice, it is likely that we would hurt each other, out of reactive/protective strategies.
Again, the intent is not to hurt and harm, but it’s more to protect. But when we’re protecting in that unconscious way, we’re likely to push our partner away. So I can’t emphasize this enough, that we cannot create safety, we cannot create a real secure attachment and connection with our significant other if we’re attacking them. And it’s likely if we are hurt and scared, we don’t feel safe. So we’re really caught in a Catch-22 in that moment. This is where mindfulness can be an incredibly useful tool.
To give you more specifics of how mindfulness can benefit your relationship, I’m gonna share with you seven ways that mindfulness really helps and benefits you and your relationship.
As I go through these seven ways, I just want you to know that there’s gonna be a bit of overlap and interconnectedness, but I wanted to give space for each of these seven aspects and ways that mindfulness can benefit, because they are distinct enough, and that they have a specific purpose that I think is really important to highlight.
Number one way that mindfulness can benefit your relationship is that you will be more attentive. With mindfulness practice we strengthen our brains, particularly in the area associated with attention and focus.
So often my husband and I use the phrase technoference… And if you’ve been listening to my show for a really long time or have listened to all of the episodes by binge-listening, you might have heard a pretty early on episode about technoference. Essentially, that is being on a device, whether or not it’s your smartphone, an iPad, your laptop, or even I would say watching TV. It’s the classic wanting your partner’s attention, but they’re focused on a technological device… Whether or not that’s answering a phone call in the middle of a conversation… And this is tricky, because our phones alert us; there’s so many ways that we’re getting notified of a social media message, or a telephone call, that we will often be distracted. And just even sometimes having the phone out can be somewhat of a threat of interference.
So there’s times where my husband will wanna show me something, and he’s saying “I’m still with you, I’m not doing technoference. I wanna show you something”, and it’s just something we’re trying to be aware of, that that gets in the way of really giving your partner undivided attention. Again, this isn’t something we can do all the time, but there can be potent moments when we sit down together that we can be present and attentive, and that is powerful… It’s powerful for your partner to know you are with them – you see them, you acknowledge them, you are listening, you’re curious, and you’re attentive. That’s something that means a whole heck of a lot, and we wanna feel that in response.
As we develop the skill of mindfulness, we will also be able to be aware of our attention. Sometimes we may drift off in thought, or space out, and we might not even recognize it. But as we develop the skill of mindfulness, we can actually recognize when we’re being attentive and when we’ve lost focus. There are times where my husband is talking, and if it’s after a long day and I’m really trying to focus, but then I start spacing out, in my mind I’ll say “What’s the last thing I heard?” and then I might ask him to repeat. I will say “I started to space out” or “I lost track. Can you go back to this point?”
If you’ve come across the idea of love languages, Gary Chapman wrote a book “Five Love Languages”, and if you’re interested, I did a podcast series on these five love languages, and I can put the link on today’s show notes, again, which can be found on my website, DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast and you can find the most recent episodes at the top to get the show notes, as well as the transcript.
So for people that their primary love language is quality time, this attention and focus is the ultimate way of expressing love and feeling love. If a partner has the quality time as their number one love language and their partner is distracted, on their phone, perhaps watching TV and does not really give them this attentiveness, they’re likely to feel that their partner really doesn’t care and doesn’t love them. That might not actually be the case, but that’s the feeling that this person would have.
Regardless of someone’s love language, being present and engaged helps create a safe space where your partner can basically feel that you’re with them, that you’re engaged, that you’re responsive, that you’re present, and that’s an important thing to maintain the quality of the connection.
Recently, my husband and I had an interaction where attentiveness was part of the upset. I was working, it was before the start of the day, and I was actually responding — maybe I was writing an e-mail, I was in the midst of something, and I was pretty engrossed; it was taking a level of thinking that some of those maybe little tasks of organization, and detailed stuff that don’t require as much thought… And my husband came in and he was wanting to ask me something, and I actually put up my finger, and I was basically like “Hold on a second, I just wanna finish my thought”, because I was gonna lose it… And sometimes writing e-mails is not the easiest thing for me, so just taking that focus to finish what I was doing…
And I think for him – you know, the beginning of the day and the end of the day feel like couple time for us, so I think the fact that I was working was kind of off from our normal routine, and then also he’s been pretty unhappy in his job, so there’s some sensitivity around the start of the day, and just facing the whole day and knowing what’s ahead and the whole unhappiness around that… And there was something else going on for him – I can’t even recall what it was – and he was feeling a little more vulnerable; I don’t know that it even matters… So he was reaching to me, essentially, and I basically put up a hand. I mean, I wasn’t trying to be that abrupt or rude, but I was basically saying “Give me a second”, but he was probably deeming it as like getting a rejection.
He turned on his heel and walked out, and I could tell the way he walked out that it didn’t feel good to him… So I finished what I was doing and I went and found him. I basically just wanted to encourage him and remind him that “Hey, I am with you. I just was trying to finish that thought; I’m sorry if it seemed rejecting.” I basically was like “I’m on team Reid!” I wanted him to know that I’m with him and I love him, and he’s ultimately my priority, I just didn’t demonstrate it in that moment.
As simple and as little as that is, it can evoke a lot of feeling, so with mindfulness I was able to be aware that like “Oh, I think I just hurt his feelings.” I wasn’t intending to, but I was able to reach to him and try to repair. If I wasn’t mindful, I wouldn’t have caught that at all, and if I was being ultra-mindful, I would maybe be able to say a little bit more lovingly “I see you have something; I really wanna finish this… Can it wait just two seconds?” I might have been able to negotiate that a little better. But again, this isn’t about perfection, it’s about progress.
The second way that mindfulness benefits our relationship and benefits us in relationship is that we are in a much better position to respond, rather than react. This relates directly to what I said initially about soothing fears and anxieties and insecurities. As we practice mindfulness, we develop our capacity for increased emotional regulation.
In previous podcast episodes I’ve talked a lot about the fight, flight or freeze mode, and how easily that can get activated when we feel threatened. This is that mechanism – the fight, flight or freeze is basically our nervous system, our physiological state getting amped up to meet whatever threat that is to protect ourselves, whether or not it’s to fight, or run. Basically, our system is giving us the boost to handle that difficulty. When we are in that fight, flight or freeze mode, that triggered place, it is impossible to respond in a level-headed, skillful way.
Recently I was working with a young client of mine… He is in college, and he was describing an interaction that he had had with his friends, and he was saying “Oh my gosh, I saw red. I just had tunnel vision”, and he actually hit a wall… We were talking about it, and he was like “I was so angry I lost control.”
And as we debriefed it and I really got a sense of what was going on, he was actually really hurt. His friends/roommates had excluded him from a bonding experience that he thought he was a part of, and when we feel hurt, it’s easy to go to a triggered place. We feel threatened… Hence he got into the red zone, the fight zone.
Research is showing us that with mindfulness we’re actually able to decrease the volume of the amygdala, that very primal part of our mid-brain that’s responsible for this fight, flight or freeze response, the survival mechanism. So it’s not that it doesn’t exist, it’s that it has decreased the volume of the amygdala, so we’re not as easily tripped up. So as we increase our mindfulness, we decrease our reactivity, that flip of the switch sometimes, that feels so automatic that we don’t even have any control to regulate that… That as we increase our mindfulness, we begin to have some choice; rather than just reacting, that we can actually choose to respond.
As the volume of the amygdala gets decreased, it has less power to essentially highjack us. It makes me think of first-responders, firefighters, police officers, ER doctors that have to be really in the moment and ready to meet whatever crisis is going on. They’ve trained themselves so well to be in the moment and not get triggered. They’re dealing with intense situations, and they’re regulated, they’re responding, rather than reacting from a triggered, activated state.
When we talk about relationship, this is so beneficial. Being mindful increases our ability to slow down, take pause, and suspend judgment, not jump to conclusions. Basically, give some space before just reacting, so that we can calm down and get out of the amygdala that very threatened state, and begin to open up so that we can communicate more clearly and from our heart.
An example comes to mind – I was working with this couple, and the woman was describing in relationship enjoying more contact, and being able to communicate a little bit throughout the day, where her partner definitely was much more laser-focused on his work… And it was a relatively new job for him, and there was still a learning curve to some of the tasks, and he would get pretty engrossed, so much so that he wouldn’t really check in at all throughout the day.
She was describing that in her more anxious times, she would start to worry and feel that he didn’t care, he wasn’t really into her as much as she was into him, and in her worst case was ruminating and fearing that he was talking to someone else, or maybe having a lunch break with another woman, and it was incredibly threatening for her.
So if she wasn’t mindful, she could basically meet him at the end of the day and say “Why didn’t you call me? What did you do for lunch?”, like really grill him from this hurt place, but it comes across more attacking.
And if he hears her tone and senses she’s upset with him, he was likely to feel en-guard, defensive, like “I just worked all day… I worked really hard, and I didn’t do anything wrong”, and in response perhaps feel protective and get defensive and push back.
With mindfulness and developing that skill, she could take some space to recognize her hurt, her fear and her longing, and be with that a little bit… And in a more vulnerable moment with her significant other, share with him, reveal to him. “You know, sometimes I really miss you during the day… And in my more insecure moments, I worry what that means when I don’t hear from you. I worry if you still love me, and in my worst moments I worry if you’re maybe talking to someone else.”
This type of sharing allows him to see her pain and see her hurt, and he’s much more likely to lean in and to wanna help. “Oh, I’m sorry it feels like that.” There’s no blame on him; he doesn’t have to defend that… He can just meet her pain and her insecurity.
The last thing I wanna say under this number two point of how mindfulness helps us respond, rather than react is that when we are increasing our skillfulness around mindfulness, we can become much more aware when a conversation, a heated discussion is starting to take a turn, is starting to go in a negative cycle, go down a negative path, and we can get back on track. We can begin to kind of calm ourselves down, regulate ourselves – that’s my number three; I’m gonna talk a little bit more about emotional regulation… But just the awareness of “Oh, I’m starting to react.”
I’ve used the example that sometimes if my husband starts to raise his tone at me and I can feel him starting to react, sometimes I will just say “I really wanna listen to you, but when you’re raising your voice, I’m starting to get defensive. I’m starting to react; I don’t wanna react. If you can lower your voice, it’ll help.” And I’m not trying to control him. I’m basically saying “I am starting to react, whether or not — you have a choice… Basically, you can lower your voice and we can have a conversation, or if you continue to raise your voice, I might be reaching a threshold where I’m gonna no longer be constructive, and I’ll have to bow out…”, versus allowing myself to get reactive and rebuttaling or getting defensive, or yelling in response to him – he raises his voice, I raise my voice. This is where that negative loop, that vicious cycle happens, and we’re much more likely to participate in destructive behavior, which results to no good.
The third way that mindfulness benefits you and your relationship is increasing emotional regulation. Mindfulness strengthens the pre-frontal cortex and improves the connectivity between the pre-frontal cortex and the amygdala. Now, I talked a lot about the amygdala in number two point, how to respond vs. react. The amygdala is responsible for the reacting, the fight, flight or freeze, whereas the pre-frontal cortex is the part of the brain that’s responsible for higher levels of thinking, perceiving emotion in others, decision-making, monitoring our own behavior and regulating our own emotional expression.
Essentially, the goal here of staying emotionally regulated is to stay in the pre-frontal cortex; when you start to get triggered and go into that amygdala part of your brain, you wanna recognize that… Because you wanna keep yourself in check, calm, regulated, and stay balanced, because that’s where you’re gonna be constructive.
As soon as the amygdala is firing, you are gonna be in protection mode, and your goal is to not get along with your partner, the goal is to protect yourself and stay safe when you feel threatened.
In an article titled “How Mindfulness Can Save Your Relationship” by Lisa Firestone – I love this, it’s so classic – she writes:
“A typical conversation between a couple may involve one partner remarking, “You used to be up for anything. You were so lively when we met.” This may spark a defensive response in the other partner: “What? You’re saying I’m not spontaneous anymore? You think I’m boring? What about you? You never get off the couch!” This type of angry and accusatory response tends to have a snowball effect. “I never said you were boring, and now you’re calling me lazy? I work day and night to make you happy. You’re so ungrateful.”
This is the type of vicious, negative cycle that leads to damage and destruction, and most of us have had some taste of this or are unfortunately experiencing this quite a bit, and it’s awful, and incredibly painful… Therefore, mindfulness can prevent this type of escalating or negative looping. It can invite a pause and a getting back on track when we start to go down these reactive, negative cycles.
With mindfulness practice and increasing emotional regulation, we can also approach sensitive topics, difficult areas in our relationship with more gentleness. John Gottman up in Seattle, through his research, has really identified that distressed couples tend to initiate difficult topics in a really confrontational, negative way… That leads to further disconnect and demise, essentially, and really difficulty in the relationship, and sometimes divorce.
If we can increase the ability to calm down, be more relaxed and centered, that even if we see that our partner is coming at us in a way that we don’t really appreciate – perhaps they have a tone of voice, or their non-verbals aren’t very nice, instead of just immediately getting offended, if we’re able to stay regulated, we might be curious enough to say “Wow, something’s going on with him. What might that be?”, and to ask “Are you okay? What’s going on? You seem like you’re having a hard time.” That’s a much gentler way than “Ugh, why are you talking to me like that?”
As we’re discussing, we can probably predict what option one would lead to… Not always, but it would be increasing the possibility that that conversation would be more connected, that (I’m using myself in this example) my partner would be much more inclined to wanna share and feel safe to open up around what’s going on, even if it was about me… And that conversation would be likely softer and more vulnerable, versus the second option – again, using myself in this example – if I were to be offended and be annoyed, and kind of get hot with him, like “Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t talk to me like that!”, he’s likely to feel more upset, maybe even more defensive, and more disconnected. That will often lead to that kind of downward spiral that I’m talking about.
I’m gonna save number four through seven for next week’s podcast episode. I realize that I tend to offer a lot to you, and really my genuine desire is for you to just have as much as you can have around these topics. I do really believe that mindfulness, and whether or not you call it something else, is essential, especially when we look at tension points, conflict in relationship… This is one of the things that can really set us up for more success, help us be way better prepared in negotiating some of these difficult times. And if we can negotiate those difficult times more constructively, that leads to more connection, more safety, and essentially a happy, lasting, intimate relationship.
If you have any questions or wanna reach out to me, my e-mail is [email protected] and I hope you stay tuned for the next episode about how to increase relationship satisfaction with mindfulness, where I will wrap up the seven ways that mindfulness can benefit you and your relationship.
Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. It is important to learn how to increase relationship satisfaction with mindfulness to improve your connection.
Thank you for your listenership, it means so much to me, and I really appreciate your feedback when you give me positive or even constructive feedback; I love to know your experience.
Until next time, I hope you take great care.
* * *
You’ve been listening to Empowered Relationship, your relationship guide. Remember to take a moment to write a review and subscribe today. You can also get your free relationship gift by visiting DrJessicaHiggins.com.
0 Comments