Building Your BEST Relationship
Step Four: TRANSITIONS OVER TIME
Transitions Over Time
Relationships are vulnerable during times of transition (marriage, educational and job changes, moves, losses, crises, retirement, and having, raising and launching children) due to the multiple changes in roles and responsibilities.
Couples who are able to talk about and adapt to ongoing changes in roles and tasks tend to move through transitions resiliently.
They keep their relationship strong by preparing for transitions and understanding what to expect as changes occur. They also have strong conflict resolution skills that help them negotiate new situations. A resilient couple tends to get through these periods by:
Taking time to listen and learn about each other’s experiences,
Finding creative ways to adjust and support each other,
Lowering their expectations and accepting less than perfect behavior,
Not taking things personally and remembering their partner is kind and loving,
Apologizing when appropriate and moving on, forgiving small hurts.
At times of crisis, one or both of the partners may be unable to function well, and missteps can happen, even for resilient couples. If there are any lasting bad feelings, they will often come back at a later time to discuss what happened from a new, calmer, more informed position. They will apologize and forgive each other, keeping their bond strong.
Couples who have difficulties discussing and adapting to ongoing changes in roles and tasks may build up unresolved issues that become resentments as they move through transitions over time.
These issues can act like little landmines, representing wounds where the partners were unable to find solutions that worked for both of them. They are left with painful memories and resentments that get triggered repeatedly over time, damaging their ability to connect.
When unresolved disagreements and conflicts are ignored or swept under the rug, partners will avoid talking about them and hope the difficult emotions will fade. But unfinished events actually form strong memory traces and are not easily forgotten. So, when the original argument or hurtful exchange is reactivated later, the anger, hurt and sadness buried with the memory come back in force. When this triggering happens repeatedly, partners fear conflict and begin to avoid being vulnerable with each other.
Defusing Landmines (Triggers) — Healing Wounds
The good news is that emotional landmines can be defused. When a couple understands problems from a new perspective, they can heal old hurts through apology and forgiveness. Once you become aware of the trigger and acknowledge the wound, you can establish new understandings. You can replace defensiveness with loving connection, but it is delicate work.
If you two have deeply painful issues from the past, trying to heal them during a time of stress is probably not a good idea. Instead, I suggest you not dig up past incidents but stay in the present and build good will with each other that will support you at a later, safer, more relaxed time to heal old wounds. In addition to creating kindness now, you can also build skills that might have prevented creating the bad memories in the first place.
If you have begun to learn the conflict resolution skills presented here, you have a head start on this process. You can always apply these skills to small misunderstandings you are running into now. With practice, you’ll develop strong skills you can use to reconstruct your history at a later date, perhaps with a professional to help guide you through that work. For now, look at the tools below; you will find a number of them to aid you in this process.
The only constant is change; the question is how do we manage it?
Our Transitions in Times of Stress:
Many couples who were caught by Covid while in the midst of other transitions are struggling more. The greater the number of changes the couples have to respond to at one time, the more difficult it is to keep on their best behavior.
Some older couples happily married for decades with stable housing and income prior to Covid have been able to make the transition to sheltering without a great deal of conflict. Years of practice managing life cycle transitions have given them an ability to pivot flexibly in the midst of changing circumstances.
Newer couples confronted with more challenges than they would usually encounter so early in a relationship have a unique opportunity to learn solid conflict resolution skills to start their relationship out collaboratively from the beginning.
Partners who have experienced a series of unexpected changes or crises and who were not prepared with good skills to manage the situations that arose may have built up resentments. Sheltering in close quarters can magnify these accumulated grievances, requiring intervention to prevent escalation.
Lack of structured and consistent information regarding Covid creates anxiety and additional stress, and family and friends in different parts of the country may be receiving conflicting messages. All of this can make coordinating with extended family for visits and providing help with children and elders fraught with anxiety and hurt feelings, especially as conditions change over time.
Your TRANSITIONS Toolkit
Tip: be sure to give yourself time and take breaks as you try these tools. If it feels especially hard, try one then wait a week before trying again.
New Tools:
Seeing change in context:
Managing our relationships over time:
Relevant Tools you have previously been introduced to:
Helping partners see themselves accurately:
Your conflict resolution skills:
Defusing escalation, understanding defaults:
Resolving conflicts:
Generating shared solutions, thinking outside the box:
Suggestions during sheltering:
The best strategy for managing transitions successfully is to try to prepare for the change ahead of time by being well informed about what is expected, making plans, and practicing skills that you will need in advance. That said, we couldn’t prepare for Covid and the changes that it brought to our lives. When we face an unanticipated change in our lives, we often experience anxiety, a feeling of helplessness, and an array of other emotions. We need to use additional strategies in that case.
Try to keep your perspective (Remember the Blueprint and visit your Scaffold.)
Adjusting to change takes time. Be patient. It’s normal. Reset your expectations, and find joy in what is.
Be kind to yourself. Do what you do best to calm yourself—meditation, a hot shower or bath, prayer, a good book, exercise. Be kind to your partner. Focus on the positive, express lots of appreciation and empathy, and be forgiving. Make it a practice to enjoy each other day by day as much as possible. Listening to music, spending time outside if possible, taking classes, reading to expand your perspective, learning a new language, or practicing a new instrument are all helpful.
Try to maintain a constructive daily routine that allows for work, play, rest, together time, and alone time. Talk about what has already been working in your home routine. If some things aren’t working, take the opportunity to brainstorm a new approach together.
Try to adopt a positive outlook: Celebrate everything good that happens, big or small. Talk together about how to make the most of this time. There are rich offerings available for free online and on TV. You can “attend” concerts, for example, or “visit” the National parks (via documentary).
Realize we are all experiencing the effects of Covid. Growing and learning together can lead to new understandings. By seeing all of our problems, not just Covid, from a new perspective, we can create more collaborative ways to connect and find solutions. This is a unique moment in time. It can be the cornerstone of new connection or just a bad memory. We decide.
Foundation —> Step 1: Bond—> Step 2: Emotional Health —> Step 3: Social Support —> Step 4: Transitions
