Turning toward one another

In marriages there are many things that work to pull us away from our spouses. These can be distractions we bring into our marriages, or distractions brought in by the world around us.  No matter how they get into our marriage we need to be watchful to make sure that they don’t make their way between ourselves and our spouses. When they start to come between spouses, they start to divide us and pull us part.

Turning toward each other happens in the moments when we connect with one another. For instance, the other evening my husband was out front doing something and he noticed a large flock of birds in the tree across the street. He knew it was something I’d be interested in seeing, so he stopped what he was doing and came and got me. I in turn stopped what I was doing and came out to see what he found so intriguing. We both stood there watching as dozens of birds flew in and out of the tree knocking the acorns out of it making it sound like the tree was raining. We were both turning toward each other. We were creating a shared memory between ourselves that was strengthening our bond and our marriage. Now when I see that oak tree, I think of standing on the porch with him, watching the birds and hearing the acorns raining down.

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“ ’Turning toward’ operates under a law of positive feedback-like a snowball rolling downhill, it can start small yet generate enormous results.” John Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Page 88.

The first step in learning how to turn toward each other is to be more aware of how important these moments are and how they build trust and heighten the romance in your marriage. These little moments are more important than taking a big romantic vacation because they are the stepping stones that keep your marriage alive.

There are 2 pitfalls that couples must be aware of when it comes to turning toward each other. The first is missing “bids” because instead of hearing the bid, you hear the negative and it starts an argument. If this seems to be the case in your marriage, you might benefit from staying calm, taking a breath and looking for the bid among the anger and replying only to that. The second pitfall is being distracted by the electronics all around us. If one or both spouses are more concerned with checking their emails, Facebook or texting, then being distracted becomes a habit that pulls them away from being open to even give their spouse any attention and any bids get missed any chance for connection get missed.

I’ve heard from many wives, and I know this to be true for myself, that one of the sexiest things their husbands can do: is the dishes. This would be considered turning toward one another, especially if the wife has commented that the dishes need to get done, so she can get the baby in the bath, or so she can get ready to go out with her friends.

As couples begin to strengthen their marriages they start to see how important their commitments to each other are and it seems that Satan works even harder to pull these marriages apart. “Satan wants us to believe that our commitments (such as marriage partner) are chance events. That way we have no responsibility to repent. We simply re-make the decision. We move to a new marriage.” It’s in these times that we need to work harder to turn toward each other and create shared meanings so we are continually strengthening our connection to one another.

A few years back I hit a very low point in my life. I had just had a stroke, following both of our boys nearly dying from health issues. I became bitter with Heavenly Father and wanted to walk away from the church. It negatively affected my marriage and started pulling us apart from each other. I was ready to walk away from my life as it was because I was letting the bitterness take over my heart. I was seeing all my husband’s flaws and was blind to my own flaws. I needed to have a change of heart. I needed to repent and change my ways. Things weren’t going to improve until I made the choice to change myself. After a year of bitterness and me only rarely turning toward him, I started softening from his continual turning toward me. He never gave up on me. Once I made the decision to turn toward him our marriage became even stronger.

We were able to make it through this very hard year because we had quite a strong bank of stored moments to sustain us and we had many shared meanings that were strong.

Gottman tells us: “When a marriage has this shared sense of meaning, conflict is much less intense and perpetual problems are unlikely to lead to gridlock.” (page 260)

During this time period we had many open discussions about what our hopes and dreams were. In the beginning these conversations lead to tears and frustrations and our paths leads to different places. This past summer was a summer of healing for me in many ways. We took a week long couple trip to Minnesota. We’ve been talking the past few years about buying land on a lake near our house to build a cabin. As we drove around Northern Minnesota our hearts started beating as one and we both fell in love with the area and made the decision that “Turtle, Moose, Bear Lake” was what we wanted and needed. We had reached the point of joint harmony and connection that had been missing in our marriage.

“A crucial goal of any marriage, therefore, is to create an atmosphere that encourages each person to talk honestly about his or her convictions.” Gottman