How to build up your relationship bank account so you have a buffer when times get hard
We can't stop bad moments from ever happening in relationships, but we can lessen their impact.The more emotional capital you have in the bank, the more good you have to draw on when things go wrong., I took a look at the research on what couples fight about. Communication topped the list, but teaching couples how to communicate better isn’t the powerful tool researchers and clinicians thought it would be.
One thing you can do is try to have more positive moments with your partner. Think of your relationship like a bank account, when you have positive experiences with your partner and feel good about your relationship, you are putting money in the bank . When you fight with your partner and feel bad about your relationship, you are taking money out of the bank. The more you build up the positive moments, the more of a buffer you have against the negative ones.
Let’s say it is Monday morning and you are rushing to get out of the house. You make coffee but when you go to get the milk you see that your partner, once again, left an empty milk carton in the fridge and you are out of milk. How do you respond? There are likely to be grumbles involved, but how upset does this make you? Do you make a big deal out of it or let it go?
Your response is likely to depend on what came before the milk incident. Imagine you are coming off a wonderful weekend with your partner. You went on a date together to a new restaurant, met up with friends for a hike, cuddled up to watch your favorite movie, reminiscing about the first time you saw it together, and your partner even surprised you with breakfast and coffee in bed. There was a lot ofthat reminded you of the early days of your relationship.
Building off early work by John Gottman, Brooke Feeney and Edward Lemay call this the “Theory of Emotional Capital” and find evidence for it in two different studies of romantic couples. People who had greater emotional capital were happier with their relationships and less negative towards their partners after their partner behaved badly. Emotional capital helped buffer them from reacting badly in response to their partner’s bad behavior.