It is normal for couples to have fights and conflicts.
Every couple has stories of how their partner has wronged them. Many will suggest that once the fight has ended that it is best to move on and not dwell on the incident. And yet, one or both people carry around the hurt from a past incident; the incident still has a lot of emotional energy. So why is it difficult for couple to let go of bad interactions?
In their book, 10 Principles for Doing Effective Couples Therapy, Drs. John and Julie Gottman provide an answer. They cite the work of Austrian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, who explored how human memory worked. One day in a café, she watched a waiter serving his customers. She noticed that the waiter took complicated orders from 12 people without writing them down. When he returned with the orders, he hadn’t missed a single detail. She also noticed that all of the waiters did this well.
So she did an experiment. Each time the waiters took an order, she tested their memory twice: before they delivered the order to the chef and then immediately afterwards. Before passing the orders to the chef, they waiters recited the orders perfectly. After the orders were delivered, they promptly forgot them. Once the orders were fully processed, it was like the waiters “wiped the board clean.”
In an informal way, Zeigarnik had discovered something about memory that other, more scientific, studies have confirmed. People “can’t let loose a memory until we’ve digested it, extracting all the meaning we can from it…Couples are no different. If a couple hasn’t fully processed a searing incident between them, they can’t let it go. But once they discuss it and grasp the mistakes they’ve made, their meanings and teachings, the incident can finally be laid to rest” (Gottman and Gottman).
Aftermath Of A Fight
The Gottmans have developed an intervention that allows for this processing and laying to rest. It is called the “Aftermath of a Fight or a Regrettable Incident.” Processing involves talking about the incident without getting back into it again. Each person has a chance to describe what they saw with some degree of emotional distance.
The intervention has five steps. In Step One, each person shares how they felt. You don’t share why you felt that way, and you avoid commenting on your partner’s feeling. In Step Two, each person describes their own perceptions of what happened in the incident. You don’t describe your partner, or attack and blame. You report your perceptions as objectively as possible. Then each person takes time to summarize and validate the partner’s reality.
In Step Three, each person shares what memories or experiences that might have caused them to react the way they did. In Step Four, each person acknowledges what they did to contribute to the incident. Each person will name specifically what they regret and apologize if necessary. In Step Five, the couple shares specific ways they can make it better next time.
The goal of this exercise is not agreement. Instead, the goal is validation; you strive to communicate that you understand your partner’s perception and how they responded. Often, couples will simply say “I’m sorry,” after a fight and then try to move on, but an “apology will be meaningless unless the partner stating it understands fully what he or she is apologizing for” (Gottman and Gottman).
William Faulkner once said, “The past is never dead. In fact it isn’t even past?” It is tempting to just say, “I’m sorry,” and move on, but the truth is there are some regrettable incidents that can still carry an emotional charge months or years later. If you would like to know more about this intervention or other ways to handle conflict in your relationship, contact me.
For more information about couples therapy, click here.