-
sponsorship
Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: 23 phrases to help you fight right.
Almost all couples fight; the secret is to fight right. I’ve posted about what not to say during a fight. Here are some phrases that actually help.
I review this list from time to time so that when I’m arguing with my husband, I remember the phrases that help me fight right. Recently, for instance, I was angry at him for showing, I thought, a lack of respect for my priorities. So I waited until a good moment (this itself is tough for me) and said, “I need you to listen. This is important to me.” From his startled expression, he clearly thought I was starting a fight; but by warning him that I needed him to respond carefully, we managed to avoid a fight altogether.
When my husband and I do argue, I find that the single best technique to apply is humor. If one of us can laugh and joke around, the angry mood lifts instantly. But during an argument, my sense of humor is the first thing to go.
Failing that strategy, here are 23 phrases that help turn down the heat of anger:
Please try to understand my point of view.
Wait, can I take that back?
You don’t have to solve this—it helps me just to talk to you.
This is important to me. Please listen.
I overreacted.
I see you’re in a tough position.
I can see my part in this.
I hadn’t thought of it that way before.
I could be wrong.
Let’s agree to disagree on that.
This isn’t just your problem; it’s our problem.
I’m feeling unappreciated. [Always, my craving for gold stars!]
We’re getting off the subject.
You’ve convinced me.
Let’s take a break for a few minutes. [If you can remember to do this, it’s extremely effective—especially if you’re having a big fight. After a break, it’s almost impossible to go back to yelling.]
Please keep talking to me.
I realize it's not your fault.
That came out all wrong.
I see how I contributed to the problem.
What are we really fighting about?
How can I make things better?
I’m sorry.
I love you.
I actually get tears in my eyes when I read this list. Such is the uplifting power of fighting right.
Also, to fight right, it’s very important to respond well if your sweetheart makes a repair attempt—the technical term for a gesture of reconciliation and love. Don’t rebuff a repair attempt!
What other strategies or phrases have helped you fight right?
* A thoughtful reader sent me the link to an excellent blog Half Full, about "the science of raising happy kids."
* If you like the blog, you'll love the book! It's not just a collection of touched-up blog posts, I promise. Pre-order The Happiness Project now!
-
sponsorship
I'm quick-tempered, and one of my greatest happiness-project challenges is to bite my tongue; an excellent way to boost my happiness is to keep my resolution to "Leave things unsaid." In the end, I'm always happier when I don't make some angry or snarky comment. But easier said than done.
This is particularly difficult with my husband. Even when I manage to leave some comment unsaid three times, four times, five times, often a version of that comment pops out of my mouth in a weak moment.
I've made big strides in this area since I started my happiness project, but I still have a long way to go.
Mindfulness is the key, but my challenge is to find a way to be mindful in an angry, annoyed, or hurt moment. When I remember to "count to 10," I can usually manage to do it, but often I say something I regret before it even occurs to me to count to 10. One of the reasons that St. Therese of Lisieux is my spiritual master is that she writes so well about the struggle to leave things unsaid.
The best way to leave things unsaid is to leave them unthought, or if I've thought them, not to dwell on them. I've noticed—no surprise—that the more clearly, and the more often, I've articulated some grudge or criticism in my mind, the more likely I'll give voice to it.
Have you found any good ways to count to 10, to leave things unsaid, to keep yourself from ruminating?
Self-mastery. As Leonardo da Vinci wrote, "One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself."
* Yet another happiness-project group is forming! I’m especially thrilled to see this one starting, because it’s in my own neighborhood of Manhattan. Check out the Facebook Group or e-mail NYCHappiness@live.com for more information, and if you know someone who might be interested, please pass along the link.
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 26,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or e-mail me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format—trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.
-
sponsorship
Every Wednesday is Tip Day, or List or Quiz Day.
This Wednesday: Five big mistakes I make in my marriage, and how I try to address them.
One of the main 12 themes of my happiness project is marriage. For me, as with many people, my marriage is one of the most central elements in my life and my happiness.
When I started my happiness project, and I reflected about the changes I wanted to make—as well as the resolutions I wanted to keep in order to bring about those changes—I realized I had five particular problem areas in my marriage. Here they are, along with the strategies I try to use to address them:
1. My demand for gold stars. Oh, how I crave appreciation and recognition! I always want that gold star stuck to my homework. But my husband just isn’t very good at handing out gold stars, and that makes me feel angry and unappreciated.
I figured out a good strategy. I used to tell myself I was doing nice things for him—“He’ll be so happy to see that I put all the books away,” “He’ll be so pleased that I finally got the trunk packed for camp,” etc.—then I’d be mad when he wasn’t appreciative. Now I tell myself that I’m doing these things because I want to do them. “Wow, the kitchen cabinets look great!” “I’m so organized to have bought all the supplies in advance!” Because I do things for myself, he doesn’t have to notice. This sounds like a more self-centered approach, but it’s really much better.
2. Using a snappish tone. I have a very short fuse and become irritable extremely easily—but my husband really doesn’t like it when I snap at him (big surprise). I’ve done a lot to try to keep my temper in check. I don’t let myself get too hungry or too cold (I fall into these states very easily); I try to keep our apartment in reasonable order, because a mess makes me crabby; when he tries to make a joke out of my temper, I try to laugh along; I try to control my voice to keep it light and cheery instead of accusatory and impatient. Confession: I haven’t made much headway here.
3. Getting angry about a fixed trait. This is very, very tough. One of the things I’ve learned from my happiness project is that you can’t change anyone but yourself, and while there are some things I’d love to change about my husband, those things aren’t going to change. He isn’t going to get better about answering my e-mails. He is going to keep making rich desserts that tempt me. Etc. Instead of getting all worked up, as I often do, I’m trying to remind myself of how small his flaws are, in the scheme of things.
4. Score-keeping. I’m a score-keeper, always calculating who has done what. “I cleaned up the kitchen, so you have to run to the store”—that sort of thing. I’ve found two ways to try to deal with this tendency.
First, I remind myself of the phenomenon of unconscious overclaiming; i.e., we unconsciously overestimate our contributions or skills relative to other people’s. This makes sense, because of course we’re far more aware of what we do than what other people do. According to Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis
, “When husbands and wives estimate the percentage of housework each does, their estimates total more than 120 percent.”
I complain about the time I spend organizing babysitting or paying bills, but I overlook the time my husband spends dealing with our car or grocery shopping. It’s easy to see that overclaiming leads to resentment and an inflated sense of entitlement. So now when I find myself thinking, “I’m the only one around here who bothers to …” or “Why do I always have to be the one who …?” I remind myself of all the tasks I don’t do.
Second, I remind myself of the words of my spiritual master, St. Therese of Lisieux: “When one loves, one does not calculate.” That precept is the basis for my 11th Personal Commandment: No calculation.
5. Taking my husband for granted. Just as I find it easily to overlook the chores done by my husband (see no. 4), it’s easy for me to forget to appreciate his many virtues and instead focus on his flaws (see no. 3). For example, although I find it hard to resist using an irritable tone, my husband almost never speaks harshly, and that's really a wonderful trait. I’m trying to stay alert to all the things I love about him, and let go of my petty annoyances. This is easier said than done.
I’ve found that working to keep my resolution to Kiss more, hug more, touch more is an effective way to help me stay in loving, appreciative frame of mind.
What are some mistakes you make in your marriage or long-term relationship? Have you found any great strategies for addressing them?
* I had a great time doing an interview with the very funny Rob Sachs of NPR's What Would Rob Do? about how to make conversation with strangers (he'd seen my post on that topic).
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 24,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or e-mail me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about that weird format—trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.
-
sponsorship
On Saturday, I took the train up to New Haven for my college reunion. I went to Yale both for college and law school, so returning there is always a very intense experience. Mostly pleasant.
Even though I spent most of the day in undergrad nostalgia mode, I also took an hour to walk through the law school. (I also considered visiting the sole copy of J. M. Barrie’s The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island, at its home in the Beinecke Library, but I ran out of time.)
A few weeks ago, I posted one of my all-time favorite posts: about how seeing the movie Twilight had reminded me of the time when my husband and I were falling in love and had inspired me to do a better job with some of my resolutions.
Many of my resolutions are aimed at helping me keep happy memories vivid (e.g., Be a treasure house of happy memories) and also at helping me stay tender and romantic. As a way to keep both sets of resolutions, I decided to take photos of some of the most important sites in our falling-in-love story:
*
We met because our carrels were back-to-back in the law library. This is the carrel I used.
*
Here’s the staircase where we ran into each other that time.
*
This is the Anchor Bar. A big group went there one night, and on the way out, he casually asked if I wanted to have breakfast at the Copper Kitchen diner the next morning, before our Corporations class. I didn’t sleep all night.
*
Here’s the Copper Kitchen.
*
Here’s the picnic table where he was sitting with a bunch of people when I came down from my dorm room to announce that I’d broken up with my boyfriend.
*
Here’s the bench where we held hands for the first time.
*
I'm so glad I took these pictures. Everything changes, and one day the Copper Kitchen and the picnic table and even that marble staircase will be gone, but now I have my record.
I'm reminded of a postcard I kept above my desk during college, of a work by Duane Michals: This photograph is my proof. The photograph shows a couple sitting cozily on a bed, and underneath is written, "This photograph is my proof. There was that afternoon when things were still good between us, and she embraced me. And we were so happy. It did happen. She did love me. Look, see for yourself!"
Ah, I have my photograph and my proof.
* The always interesting Marci Alboher sent me the link to a great post, Can Cooking Make You Happier? at My Kitchen Nutrition. It reminds me that everyone's happiness project is different. Cooking isn't a source of happiness for me, but it is for a lot of other people.
* Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just e-mail me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.
-
sponsorship
I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.
A few days ago, I posted about how watching the movie Twilight made me more determined to keep my resolutions to be tender and romantic. After I looked at my list, however, I realized that I’d never made a specific resolution to “kiss more, hug more, touch more.” So I’ve added that to my ever-growing list of resolutions.
It’s easy to see that kissing, hugging, and touching would boost the tenderness in your romantic relationship. However, physical expressions of affection can strengthen all sorts of connections.
In her fascinating book The How of Happiness
, Sonja Lyubomirsky discusses a study in which students were assigned to two groups. One group was the control; one group was assigned to give or receive at least five hugs each day for a month—a front-to-front, nonsexual hug, with both arms of both participants involved and with the aim of hugging as many different people as possible. The huggers were happier.
Another study showed that women who got hugs several times a day from their husbands had lower blood pressure than those who didn’t get hugged as often.
Interesting fact: To be most effective at optimizing the flow of the chemicals oxytocin and serotonin—which boost mood and promote bonding—hold a hug for at least six seconds.
Along with hugging, playful and affectionate touching makes you feel closer to the people important to you. And touch is important even with strangers—studies show that subliminal touching (touching so subtle that it’s not consciously perceived) dramatically increases a person’s sense of well-being and positive feelings toward you, the toucher. For example, research shows that when restaurant servers touch their customers, they increase their tips by more than 3 percent.
I haven’t come across any research that examines the effects of kissing, but I think it’s safe to venture that lots of kisses will make you happier.
Expressing affection (in whatever way you express it) makes a big difference in relationships. For instance, people are 47 percent more likely to feel close to family members who frequently express affection than to those who rarely do so.
But there’s another reason to express affection. One of my most important Personal Commandments is to act the way I want to feel. We think we act because of the way we feel, but often, we feel because of the way we act. By acting in a loving way, you prompt loving feelings in yourself. It’s much harder to be angry or annoyed with someone when you’re kissing or hugging or touching.
Be careful, however, to keep those physical expressions of affection appropriate. During a radio interview after I posted about Happiness Myth No. 7: Doing "random acts of kindness" brings happiness, the host mentioned that he’d been walking down the street when a guy announced, “Free hugs!” and gave him a big bear hug—a random act of kindness that did not result in happiness in that case. And the nonsexual nature of your full-frontal, two-armed hug might be misinterpreted, if you’re not careful.
Do you find that touching, hugging, and kissing boosts your happiness? Have you found any strategies to make sure you don’t forget this aspect of relationships?
* Speaking of being more loving, over on the Facebook page, a lot of people have posted about their strategies for keeping romance strong in a long relationship. Good ideas.
* Superfans, I'm waiting to get the e-mail telling me that I can send you the link to the superfabulous, soon-to-be-unveiled Web site, for prelaunch. I know I keep saying that, but I really am hoping that it will be today. Or maybe Monday. Want to be a superfan? Sign up here.
-
sponsorship
One of my happiness-project resolutions is to Read memoirs of catastrophe. I hit on this as my own form of memento mori – better than keeping a skull on my desk. Most of the memoirs I read deal with illness or death, in one form or another, but a different kind of catastrophe is divorce. I recently finished the terrific memoir of divorce by Isabel Gillies, Happens Every Day
. (You might recognize her picture, because when she’s not writing, she’s an actress on Law and Order; also in the movie, Metropolitan
.)
Even before I opened it up, I was inclined to love the book, because I’d heard that Isabel Gillies wrote the whole thing at my beloved New York Society Library. Once I started it, I couldn’t put it down – I ended up reading the whole thing in one day. One of the most important themes of the book is happiness (no surprise), and Isabel Gillies has obviously done a lot of thinking about the subject.
Gretchen: What's a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Isabel: Listening to a good song and dancing to it. Even better if my kids join me. I got to tell you, right now that Taylor Swift song “Love Story” is really doing it for me.
What's something you know now about happiness that you didn't know when you were 18 years old?
At 39, I find that enough sleep can be a big factor in how happy one is, but I’m not sure that was true at 18. My feeling about happiness (shared by many others of course) is that you are born with it. It’s a chemical thing. There are outside factors that can make you happier or sadder but everyone has a base level of happiness that varies from one person to the next. I don’t know that I knew that when I was younger. At 18, a live Grateful Dead show or having a cutie-pie boy smile at me after English class could make me pretty darn happy, but then again, I’m still dancing in the living room to Taylor Swift, so I don’t know how much has changed.
Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Oh, I sweat the small stuff a lot. I have to make my 7-year-old lunch to take to school, and every morning I wake up in a panic about what it will be. Will he like it? Will it stay hot? What if it’s not enough? Oh good lord it bums me out. I wish I could be more Zen, or wise enough to know that there are some things that you just can’t change or fix, so you should just take a deep breath and move on with your day. I can also be sensitive and get my feelings hurt, and then I focus on that instead of seeing the bigger picture.
Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you've find very helpful? Or a particular book that has stayed with you?
Well, in my book I cite Adlai Stevenson’s quote about Eleanor Roosevelt, that she’d “rather light a candle than curse the darkness.” And that has become my motto. Also, I read my children The Missing Piece
by Shel Silverstein. The book is an endless source of happiness for them. It just makes them laugh and pause and think. Seeing them dig it so much makes me think they’re onto something, so I pay attention to that book a lot and try to remember its lessons.
If you're feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost? Or, like a "comfort food," do you have a comfort activity? (mine is reading children's books).
Getting in bed with a cookbook. Settling into an evening of good TV, a glass of white wine, and take-out. Chatting on the phone with a pal, while making the beds. A walk. Having a snuggle with a kid. A jelly donut and cup of tea. Looking at photo albums. Picturing my husband's smile.
Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?
Gosh, these are harder questions than I thought. I guess I think that if one basically feels happy, then that is a done deal, with the environment or circumstances they find themselves in temporarily adding or subtracting from that. If someone is really unhappy, even winning the lottery will only make them happy for a certain amount of time and then they will probably return to their original state. I think what one may want to achieve is not so much happiness but peace?
Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy - if so, why? If you were unhappy, how did you become happier?
I think I have always felt the same level of happiness. I know that because I naturally wake up happy, and I always have. I think it’s my mother’s favorite thing about me. If there is something negative going on in my life, I might remember it soon after I wake, and then get bummed out, but the first feeling I have when I open my eyes is happiness. I think it's chemical.
Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
I work on figuring out the root of why certain things get me down. It drives me crazy to think that my life can be adversely affected, or I can be pushed around, by something that I could change with a little introspective digging. If I can get to the bottom of why something gets in the way of my happiness I might be able to beat it. Another good trick to getting happy is focusing on something larger than yourself. Like jury duty oddly can make you happy. Participating in the bigger picture, something civic, something outside your own little life can make you swell with happiness. It might be subtle, but it’s definitely there.
Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn't - or vice versa?
I have been surprised that some very sad and unhappy times didn't actually ruin my life, which is a lot of what my book’s about. Sometimes you have to make an active decision to be happy. Or, maybe even better, sometimes you have to find even the tiniest detail to show yourself there is happiness still inside you. You have to look for the good, the happy, even if it's in something as small as a jelly donut.
* I have a few rare friends who are so funny that just the memory of things they said, years ago, is enough to start me laughing. (I'm married to one of these folks, lucky me.) One such friend has just started a blog, RealDelia, about "finding yourself in adulthood." I'm so excited; Delia lives in London now, so I see her very rarely, but now I can get my fix every day. In today's post, the phrase that got me going was the "searing professional experiences" line...ok, now I'm going back to read through the archives.
* If you're interested in volunteering as a super-fan, to help me out with various tasks such as the early testing of my super-fabulous new website, you can click here or email me at gretchenrubin1 [at] gmail [dot com]. Just write “super-fan” in the subject line. To those of you who sign up -- thanks so much!
-
sponsorship
You know those unpleasant marital tasks that one of you has to do—and the question is who’s going to do it? Yesterday, my husband and I had one of those chores, and he had agreed to do it. Then at the last minute, he backed out because he had a work conflict—a legitimate conflict, but one he would’ve known about, if he’d been paying attention.
I was very annoyed.
But instead of following his likely first instincts, my husband deployed some of the strategies that get recommended for such situations. He said, “I know, I really screwed up here.” He said, “I know it would be a huge pain for you to have to deal with this now.” He said, “What would happen if we just bailed? Can we do it another time? Can I show up late?” After some discussion, I said I’d do it, and later he sent me an e-mail that said, “Thank you, honey.”
And you know what? It really did help.
* I talked to Kimberly Palmer at U.S. News & World Report about her "5 Ways to Be Happy in a Recession." Interesting topic!
* Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just e-mail me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.