An Important Way That Love Gets Eroded

It is unusual for a honeymoon period to last forever, but some relationships fair a lot better than others. Not just in terms of staying together vs separating, but in terms of happiness and satisfaction in the relationship. What’s the secret? There are many, but here’s one of them…

Communication

In this video, the case is made for a specific aspect of communication: airing grievances.

Superficially, this doesn’t seem like a recipe for happiness, but it is one important ingredient—that it’s dangerously easy to let small grievances add up and eat away at one’s love and patience, until one day resentment outweighs attachment, and at that point, it often becomes a case of “checking out before you leave”, remaining in the relationship more due to inertia than volition.

Which, in turn, will likely start to cause resentment on the other side, and eventually things will crumble and/or explode.

In contrast, if we make sure to speak our feelings clearly (10almonds note, not in the video: we think that doing so compassionately is also important), the bad as well as the good, then it means that:

• things don’t stack up and fester (there will less likely be a “final straw” if we are regularly removing straws)
• there is an opportunity for change (in contrast, our partner would be unlikely to adjust anything to correct a problem they don’t know about)
• all but the most inclined-to-anxiety partners can rest easy, because they know that if we had a problem, we’d tell them

This is definitely only one critical aspect of communication; this video for example says nothing about actually being affectionate with one’s partner, or making sure to accept emotional bids for connection (per that story that goes “I knew my marriage was over when he wouldn’t come look at the tomatoes I grew”), but it is one worth considering—even if we at 10almonds would advise being gentle yet honest, and where possible balancing, in aggregate if not in the moment, with positive things (per Gottman’s ratio of 5:1 good moments to bad, being the magic number for marriages that “work”).

For more on why it’s so important to be able to safely air grievances, see:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

Seriously Useful Communication Skills! ← this deals with some of the important gaps left by the video

Take care!