WEEK 7: Staying Emotionally Connected

I want you to think for a moment, allow yourself to daydream if you will, about your future.  What are your plans for retirement?  How old do you want to be when you retire? Where do you want to live? How do you want to spend your time when you retire? Do you want to travel? Spend time with your family? Enjoy your hobbies?

How will you make these dreams become a reality?  Will you wake up on your 65^th birthday and realize that it is time to begin living your retirement dream?

Of course not!  That would be naïve and reckless to plan your future in that manner. 

 To achieve these dreams, you will need to be prepared with savings in your bank account.  Now is the time to identify your goals for the future, plan and intentionally begin your saving so you will be financially prepared for retirement. This savings, which takes time and effort will benefit your greatly when you retire.  But imagine the blessing this savings would be to you and your family if along the way you find yourself in a time of financial stress.  What if you lose your job or are injured and unable to continue working for a time?  This savings that you have so diligently been working towards could aid in weathering that storm.

Emotional Bank Accounts in Marriage

In The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, John Gottman teaches:

“Each time partners turn toward each other, they are funding what I’ve come to call their emotional bank account. They are building up savings that, like money in the bank, can serve as a cushion when times get rough, when they’re faced with a major life stress or conflict.  Because they have stored an abundance of goodwill, such couples, are less likely to teeter into distrust and chronic negativity during hard times.” 

Just as it is important to have savings in our financial bank accounts, to be a cushion for tough financial times and to be prepared for retirement, we need to make sure that we are keeping our emotional bank accounts full, so we can weather the storms that will inevitably arise in marriage. 

How can we do this?  

Gottman teaches that we need to “turn to one another” through our day to day interactions and recognize when the other is seeking out your attention, or “bids for attention.”  Showing our spouse that we see them and recognizing their need for our attention can make the world of a difference in our relationships.

Let me paint a picture for a minute of what 5:00 pm looks like at my house.  Usually at this time I am trying to get the kids to finish their homework, practice their piano and get their chores done.  I am trying to get dinner on the table and often simultaneously running the kids around to gymnastics and baseball practice.  To say that it is chaos is an understatement.  It is usually amidst this circus act that my husband walks in the door from work, gives me a kiss, asks me how my day was and then begins to help one of our kids with their homework or asks how he can help me get dinner on the table.

 It’s real life.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the demands of our family that we can become distracted from recognizing when the other needs attention or may even be feeling overwhelmed and need our help. That question “how was your day?” usually gets a quick response of “fine” or “it was crazy, I’ll tell you about it later.”  But do we always “talk about it later”?  Sometimes.  And other times it gets forgotten and life goes carries on never readdressing the stresses of the day.  But it is when we later find a quiet moment, when we can give our time and attention to the other, and again ask “So how was your day? I want to hear about it” that we add to our emotional bank account in our marriage.  Being able to look for these “bids for attention” and then respond to them helps the other see that they are important to you, even amidst the chaos of life.  

I leave you with this thought from Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, apostle of the LDS faith, which reminds us that we need to continually work to build and maintain strong marriages:

References

Gottman, J. M. (2015). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. New York: Harmony Books.