Marriage & Relationships

Have you ever found yourself dwelling on a hurtful comment your partners made or fixating on their mistakes? Criticisms often have a greater impact than compliments and bad news frequently draws more attention than good. The reason for this is that negative events have a greater impact on our brains than positive ones. Psychologists refer to this as the negative bias (also called the negativity bias), and it can have a powerful effect on your behavior, your decisions, and more importantly your relationships.

Additionally, studies have shown that negative news is more likely to be perceived as truthful, even when the news is not being delivered by the person or people involved. Since negative information draws greater attention, it also may be seen as having greater validity. This might be why bad news seems to garner more attention. 

For example, after an argument with your significant other, you find yourself focusing on all of your partner’s flaws, the 'he said, she said'. Instead of acknowledging his or her good points and pausing to see yourself from a different point of view. You ruminate over all of their imperfections instead of taking a moment to recognize your own. Even the most trivial of faults are amplified, while positive characteristics are overlooked. 

Dr. Gary Chapman is a genius when he discovered the 5 love languages. When my husband and I first got married the first year was the most difficult to adjust to and  oftentimes in the heat of a fight I strongly remember saying "I don't know how to love you more than I already do?!" I was frustrated and overwhelmed when I sat with my therapist and it was in her office when she first asked me one simple question, " How do you want to be loved?" I was embarrassed then to admit I didn't know, and if I didn't know to ask than how was I ever going to recognize it when it was happening?

Gary Chapman  presents a simple truth: "relationships grow better when we understand each other. Everyone gives and receives love differently, but with a little insight into these differences, we can be confidently equipped to communicate love well. This is true for all forms of relationship – for married or dating couples, for children and teenagers, for friends and coworkers, for long-distance relationships, for those brand-new loves and for the romances that are older than the hills."

Lets just be clear when we are "fighting" with the person we love, the person we share a bed with, the person we laugh with and have sex with, the person who sees us when we are kicking ass or have a snotty nose and holey sweatpants, why would we ever want to fight with them? Well to answer this more simply the person looking for a fight is our inner child. Your inner child is the one who has been triggered and is pissed as hell and is no longer going to take it. When we show up as our inner child this gets us into a fight with our partner and even worse, it is our ego that keeps us there.

 People tend to go on fighting about issues even when they are no longer relevant or when their original importance has diminished. They do this for the sake of proving a point and to demonstrate that they are the winners and, more importantly, that the other person is the loser. But often the one who loses the most in the long run is the "victor" himself.