Overcoming Gridlock in Marriage

In every marriage there comes a time where we get stuck. We hit a wall and we just can’t move forward. Why you might ask. It’s because we have hit a point where our dreams are not matching up.

John Gottman in his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (page 237) shares the four characteristics that all gridlocked disagreements share:

1.      “You’ve had the same argument again and again with no resolution.

2.      Neither of you can address the issue with humor, empathy, or affection.

3.      The issue is becoming increasingly polarizing as time goes on.

4.      Compromise seems impossible because it would mean selling out-giving up something important and core to your beliefs, values, or sense of self.”

The thing is, to move past gridlock you don’t have to solve the problem, and neither of you have to feel like you have lost what you’re dreaming of or given in to your spouse’s dream that you don’t also hold, you just need to find a way to talk about the issue without hurting each other again in the process.

So how do we go about working through these times when we get gridlocked because of dreams not aligned in our marriages. To figure this out we’re going to turn back to Gottman’s book and follow his steps.

Step 1: Explore the dream(s)

·         Choose a dream that’s causing gridlock

·         Write it down with an explanation of your position

·         Write the story for the hidden dream

·         Explain where the dreams come from and why they are so important to you

·         Spend 15 minutes talking about your dream. Be completely honest about it, no criticism about spouse, no harsh startups.

·         Spend 15 minutes listening to spouse talk about their dream. Don’t think of rebuttals or how to solve their problem, be supportive of their dream.

After you’ve heard your spouse’s dream you can decide if you want to help them with their dream there are 3 different level that Gottman (page 252) talks about in regards to support. Each level gives more support. I don’t think the higher levels necessarily mean that you are showing more love or devotion to your spouse because their dream may be something that you could never back up, or do yourself, but supporting them by being interesting in it, or actively enabling it would show so much love and support to them.

Levels of honoring your spouse’s dream

Level 1: Express understanding of the dream and be interesting in learning more.

Level 2: Actively enable the dream.

Level 3: Become part of the dream.

            Step 2: Soothe

Talking about dreams that don’t a line with your dreams might prove to be hard for you to hear and could flood one or both spouses. If this happens, take a break, calm your heart rates down and start over. While you’re calming yourselves down do something that you both enjoy or do something separately that brings both of you back to your calm state. Don’t try to continue with your conversation about your dreams in an aroused and agitated state. It will prevent you from getting very far.

            Step 3: Reach a temporary compromise

At this point you aren’t trying to solve the problem, you’re just trying to take some of the pain from the problem out of it so that there is less pain. I love the approach that Gottman suggests you use to do this. He suggests you use the “Finding common ground” approach. This approach has you draw 2 circles. One smaller than the other and this one is inside of the larger one. The smaller one you write down the things that you can’t comprise on “nonnegotiable areas”. The larger one you write the things down on that you are willing to compromise on “areas of flexibility”. Talk together about your lists and come up with a temporary compromise. Give it 2 months to work with this compromise and see it is can help bring some peace and calmness to the situation. After the 2 months is over, sit back down and talk about the dream and where you are both at with it. It might help to redo your circles and see where you’re at with your nonnegotiable areas and where your areas of flexibility have changed. I would guess there would be some softening and changed feelings and a permanent compromise could be agreed upon at this time.

            Step 4: Say “Thank you”

After you’ve been able to sit and figure out a gridlocked dream tell your spouse 3 specific things you appreciate about them. Let them know how you feel about them. I think especially if you didn’t figure a permanent compromise out telling your spouse 3 things you appreciate about them would go a long way towards them feeling loved and that their feelings were heard.

Years ago I had the dream of taking down a wall in our house and remodeling. My husband wanted nothing to do with the idea. Then I had some medical issues and all of the sudden my dream became ours and before we knew it we were knocking down 2 walls and remodeling more than I had originally thought. We didn’t go through these exact steps, but we went through a similar process. We weren’t on the same page for years, and then we were. It took patience, compromise and then appreciation. Now we have room to have people over, our family can all hang out together while we talk and cook and we have a full sized oven!