Some may say that love is an instinct, and everyone knows how to love. Yes, but turning emotional love into a stable relationship in real life is a skill that needs to be learned.
Let me ask you a question: How do you usually solve problems with your partner?
You might think that good communication is the most important. That’s true, but sometimes, if the emotional foundation is not good, no matter how much you communicate, you will not be on the same page.
Therefore, a strong emotional connection is the premise of effective communication. The partner who is best at problem-solving is not the one who is best at communication, but the one with a solid emotional foundation.
In this regard, John M. Gottman, a renowned American marriage and family expert, has proposed a concept called the “emotional bank account”.
He compares the emotions of a couple to a bank account, where every interaction that enhances emotions between partners is like depositing money into this account. The more balance in the emotional account, the greater the buffering effect when facing stress and conflicts, and the more likely the couple will overcome difficulties. On the other hand, if the emotional account has little money or is already in deficit, even small conflicts can escalate into a breaking point for the relationship.
Three Tips for Depositing Money into the Emotional Account
How can you deposit money into the emotional account? I have summarized three tips to share with you.
The first tip for depositing money into the emotional account is to increase emotional responses in daily life.
What are emotional responses? It means creating a feeling of being together when responding to your partner.
In the attachment relationship between a baby and its mother, the baby finds ways to confirm that the mother is with them. For example, the baby often uses eye contact to search for the mother’s gaze. If the mother looks back at the baby, the baby smiles at her. The emotional exchange between the two is completed in this interaction. If the mother doesn’t look at the baby, the baby feels disappointed and might cry to get the mother’s attention.
Babies long to be seen by their mothers. Similarly, in an intimate relationship, people also long to be “seen” by their partners. For adults, eye contact is not the only channel of interaction. People use various forms of interaction invitations. The most common form is conversation.
A wife says to her husband, “I had a nightmare last night.” This is an invitation for a conversation.
If the husband says, “It’s just a dream, everyone has them, what’s the big deal.” he rejects the invitation. If he says, “What kind of dream? Tell me about it.” he accepts the invitation. Just like the gaze between a child and their mother, emotional interaction between two people is created.
In an intimate relationship, when one party rejects an invitation for interaction, the inviting party often feels disappointed, and they might express their dissatisfaction in an angry manner, hoping to get the attention of their partner. They may choose not to share such things with their partner in the future since they won’t receive a response anyway.
In everyday life, every emotional response increases the emotional connection between partners and deposits money into their emotional account. Conversely, missing or rejecting a response means losing money.
In a healthy relationship, partners have a natural instinct to be interested in what the other person says, and they naturally respond to each other. Their conversations, even small talk, are filled with warmth.
Moreover, when one party makes an invitation for emotional response through body language, such as putting their hand on the other’s shoulder, hugging, or throwing paper balls at each other, the other party understands it without words. They are constantly depositing money into the emotional account.
What is considered a good emotional response? How do you know if you are responding to your partner well or unintentionally rejecting them?
Shelly Gable, a psychology professor at the University of California, has classified responses into four types based on their positivity, activeness, and passiveness.
The first type is actively positive responses.
For example, if your partner says, “I think I’ve lost some weight recently.”
You might say:
“Wow! That’s amazing! How many pounds did you lose? Does exercising work for you? How did you manage to stick to it? Can you wear the clothes you’ve always wanted to wear now?”
These are actively positive responses, characterized by lots of question marks and exclamation marks.
Of course, maybe you don’t usually talk like this with your partner, but at least you can learn the spirit behind these responses: appreciation, recognition, sincerity, and interest, with the hope of continuing the conversation. The relationship message it conveys is, “I appreciate and care about you.”
The second type is passively positive responses.
For example, if your partner says, “I think I’ve lost some weight recently.”
You might say, “Oh, that’s great. It’s the result of your persistence.”
This short sentence ends the conversation. The relationship message it conveys is, “I appreciate you, but I’m not very interested in this topic itself.”
The third type is actively negative responses.
For example, if your partner says, “I think I’ve lost some weight recently.”
You might say, “I didn’t notice. It’s not obvious. You had a higher starting weight, to begin with. Does losing 5 pounds count as losing weight? My colleague lost 20 pounds in a month!”
These responses show enthusiasm to continue the conversation but in a critical and negative direction. The relationship message it conveys is, “I don’t approve of you, and I’m interested in undermining you.” Unless it’s a joke, this kind of response is not helpful and can be detrimental to the relationship.
The last type is passively negative responses.
For example, if your partner says, “I think I’ve lost some weight recently.”
You will say: “Oh.” “Haha.”
Then continue playing on your phone. This response is a refusal to communicate, and the relationship message it sends is: “I’m not interested in you.” It is likely that your partner will never tell you this again.
Using the theory of emotional accounts to understand, the first two responses are to save money. Such communication can make love abundant. The latter two responses result in losing money.
At this point, I want to ask you to think about it, which of the above four types of communication patterns do you and your partner belong to?
The second tip for saving money in an emotional account is to strengthen shared memory.
In the consulting room, I often ask partners who are experiencing problems:
“Why did you choose to be together in the first place?”
“What did the other person do that impressed you?”
“When is the time when you feel happiest?”
I have found that no matter how conflicted the couple is, recalling their shared experiences and initial emotions will create a warm feeling.
There is a couple who quarrel with each other. They say that their best time was in the summer when they first fell in love. Every night, the boy picks up the girl and comes home from get off work. The two of them sit on the floor of the rental house, order a large plate of crayfish, drink beer, and watch variety shows on TV. They visited all the crawfish restaurants in the city and rated each one, naming one as the best in the city.
I asked them: “Is that store still there?” They said: “I haven’t been there for a long time. It was closed long ago.”
Another couple who was considering divorcing talked about their good times. The wife said: “Don’t look at how cruel my husband is now and has a bad attitude towards me. When he first pursued me, he wrote me love letters one after another. .Every time I receive a letter from him, I will be very touched. I will receive these letters in a box and hide them carefully.”
Her husband listened, his expression gradually softening. I asked her: “Did you read these letters later?” She said: “No. Then I gradually stopped opening them.”
Listening to these partners reminiscing about the past, I would feel the same sense of trance as they did. Those loves were once so beautiful and fresh, they shouldn’t be as hurtful and boring as they are now. Recalling shared experiences is like opening up another space, allowing them to find the spark to continue their relationship from the warmth of the past.
If you feel tired in an intimate relationship, you can also look through old photos with your partner, read old love letters, listen to old songs, and recall the difficult things you experienced in the past. Maybe slowly, you will know the way you came and know where to go next.
The third tip for depositing money into an emotional account is to express recognition and appreciation to the other person.
Loving partners often express recognition and appreciation for each other. For example, when a wife helps her husband pack his clothes, the husband will say next to her: “I’m lucky to have you, wife, for taking such good care of me.” When the husband comes home late from working overtime, the wife will also say: “Thank you for your hard work, husband. Our family is now prosperous. Everything is You deserve the credit.” Unloving partners only have contempt and belittlement for each other.
If you understand attachment theory, you will know that these recognitions and gratitude are not means to manipulate the other person, nor are they fake romance. Sweet words are sweet because they meet people’s need for attachment.
The language of love is repeated over and over again and people can’t get enough of it. In fact, it’s all the same: “You are the most important person to me. I love you, cherish you, and want to be with you.”
The communication method that can enhance each other’s feelings and enrich love is to use different words and actions to continuously convey this simple but important message to each other.