Ratio of three to one

I work with a lot of couples. I have been in many relationships. Sometimes I wonder how I , with my patchwork relationship history, can work with couples. As I may have already told you my daughter Monnya's answer to the question
is, "But Mom you know exactly what not to do."
I also work with singles to help them learn to rely on themselves and, if they chose to, to enter into a relationship that is healthy. Joyce and Barry Vissel who work with couples and write an e-newsletter called "A Shared Heart" wrote about finding a life partner. They suggest to allow yourself to begin to feel how much you love your life partner even before you have met the person. Letting yourself feel that will naturally attract that person to you. Once you meet the person they suggest throwing out your list and trusting in your intuition. In my case, fears of intimacy may prevent us from recognizing our life partner. Only after we work through those fears is it possible to see the other person's beauty and to experience love freely. I think the most important quality in a relationship is whether both people are committed to working on themselves.
That work could take many forms. When a person is ready to use a relationship as a means to grow and to embrace the hard work involved in working things out with another person, the relationship has a chance of deepening and evolving into a true spiritual path. Relationship can be a spiritual path because it is like walking around with a mirror in your face. When your partner holds the mirror for you to see yourself with love, compassion and respect it provides a safe space to grow together. When both people are committed to being fully expressed beings individually and to supporting each other in being fully expressed beings there is an amazing opportunity to move beyond old conditioning especially the wounds we carry from our original families. Even so this is really hard work. My friend Smokey and her husband Graham love each other very much. They have vastly different personalities. In the past five years a sweetness has developed from all the hard work they have done to accept each other as they are. They put energy into repairing and resolving conflicts and into cutting each other a great deal of slack. It is so inspiring to be around them now. John Gottman in his research with couples who report being happily married, has found that there is a three to one ratio of positive to negative comments. If you are currently in a relationship with a partner begin a practice of noticing what you appreciate and getting it out of your mouth. Let's practice making that ratio true by beginning with ourselves. Whether we are in a primary relationship or not if every time we say something negative to ourselves we then say three positive things it makes sense we will be happier. It would go like this, "I probably already wrote about that in here." - One negative, then three positives, "Even if that is true it is still a good idea and worth repeating. I have good ideas. It is gutsy of me to share my good ideas on this blog." That was quite pleasurable and required me to use my creativity to appreciate myself. I'm going to experiment with three positives for every negative. Would you care to join me?