relationships Archives - Page 5 of 5

Permalink Gallery
The Four Horsemen of Relationship Doom

The Four Horsemen of Relationship Doom

When a couple comes in for treatment, I can often see behaviors that undermine the relationship within just a few minutes of speaking with the couple. Specifically, there are four distinct behaviors that spell doom for any relationship. In the first few sessions, I will usually explain these harmful behaviors and help the couple to catch themselves in the act.

In the previous post, the Triangular Theory of Love, I mentioned Dr. John Gottman, a psychologist who specializes in research about marriages and relationships. In his years of research he has identified these four types of relationship behaviors (which he called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) and based on their presence, has been able to predict within 90% accuracy which relationship will succeed and which will fail. These behaviors all consist of ways that people react when dealt with adversity or conflict in the relationship. In other words, Gottman claims that it is not the underlying problem, but the ways that the couple reacts to the problem which determines the fate of the relationship. He found that all of these four behaviors were common in marriages that ended up in divorce.

The behaviors are:

1. Criticism- this is when one partner constantly criticizes the other and makes it personal. For example, instead of criticizing a mistake, the partner will attack the personality or character of the partner instead of just the action. This is most commonly a behavior trait of women.

2. Contempt- this is when the criticism gets particularly hostile, including name calling and cursing. This indicates a total lack of respect within the relationship.

3. Defensiveness- […]

By Michael Aaron|February 2nd, 2014|Couples Therapy|1 Comment

Permalink Gallery
The Triangular Theory of Love

The Triangular Theory of Love

Another one from the archive vault…

There has been a lot of recent research concerning what makes a successful relationship work. One of the leading lights in this research is Dr. Gottman, who stated he could predict with a high degree of accuracy which marriages would end up in divorce, merely by the ways in which the couple communicated with each other. I will write more about Dr. Gottman in a future post.

Another important researcher in this area is Dr. Robert Sternberg, a psychologist specializing in cognition, who created the Triangular Theory of Love. I want to take a moment to describe this theory, since I think that it does a good job of describing the types of relationships that people may find themselves in.

This theory holds that all successful love relationships are comprised of three key areas, which symbolize the three end points of a triangle:

Intimacy: which is the feeling of closeness, sharing and connectedness.
Passion:which is the drive for romance, physical attraction, and sexual desire.
Commitment: which is the desire to stay together.

Not all relationships possess all three qualities, but an ideal love, or “consummate love” as he coins it, contains all three. Some relationships possess only one or two of the above qualities and Dr. Sternberg categorizes types of relationships by which of these three qualities are present in the relationship.

For example, “Non-love” would describe a relationship with none of the qualities listed above, while “Liking/friendship” contains intimacy, but no passion or commitment. Below is a list of all the other types of relationships based on the triangle:

Infatuated love: pure passion, absolutely no intimacy or commitment; otherwise […]

By Michael Aaron|January 24th, 2014|Couples Therapy, Sex Therapy|1 Comment

Permalink Gallery
How to Keep Relationships Fresh and Exciting

How to Keep Relationships Fresh and Exciting

I was recently looking through some archives of some old articles I had written years ago. From time to time, I will use reuse some old material that readers of this blog may find helpful. I wrote the following piece for a relationship site a number of years ago, but it is still relevant today as ever. I hope you enjoy…..

The first few months of a promising relationship are always exciting, but inevitably even the best relationships start to slow down as they mature and start to feel like they are falling into a rut. You become habituated to the other person, no matter how interesting or sexy they are, and both of you start to give up to the grind of a daily routine.

Stop.

This will kill your relationship. The death-knell of any good relationship are the words dull, routine, or grind as opposed to fun, sexy, spontaneous, and exciting.

Remember this list of good words and bad words as a quick guide to see whether or if your relationship is on track:

Good Words Bad Words

Fun Boring

Sexy Plain

Spontaneous Routine

Exciting Dull

Get it?

So let’s introduce another concept that will lead to more fun, sexy, spontaneous and exciting times rather than boring, plan, routine, dull ones. Here’s the concept- ANTICIPATION.

This can be a running idea that lasts for the whole day, week, month or year. This is how it works: Put an idea into your partner’s head about something that is going […]

By Michael Aaron|January 7th, 2014|Couples Therapy|0 Comments

Permalink Gallery
How Power is Expressed in Relationships

How Power is Expressed in Relationships

In the previous article, I discussed the existence of power in relationships. In this article, I will describe how this power is often expressed. For the sake of simplicity, I will categorize power into two dimensions and four distinct groups. The two dimensions of power are aggression and control, both of which I would argue are key components of power. Think about it- someone who is in power has more control over a situation than someone who doesn’t, and so more authority to also use aggression.

Let’s take a look at the aggression dimension first. It consists of two groupings– direct and indirect. Direct refers to overt aggression, both physical and verbal, and clear action and intent. In other words, it is clearly visible. That doesn’t mean that power itself is overt, just the usage. Someone can verbally abuse someone, for example, without either party acknowledging that the aggression could only exist in a an environment of power disparity. Indirect power is less obvious and often invisible. It is usually covert by definition. A perfect example of this is what people refer to when they call someone passive-aggressive, which refers to the use of aggression by withholding or doing something behind someone’s awareness.

As mentioned, the second dimension of power is control. This dimension can also be broken into two separate groupings– internal and external. Internal control is what people think of when they refer to the term “dominance.” Although dominance is often confused with its counterpart, domineering–which I will explore next– to describe someone who is abusive, it actually has a quite different meaning. In this […]

By Michael Aaron|December 3rd, 2013|Couples Therapy, Sexuality and Psychology|1 Comment