The Two Magic Relationship Ratios
Libby talks about the two magic relationship ratios uncovered by scientific research conducted by the Gottman Institute and some implications for polyamorous relationships.
Transcript
These two magic ratios, both emerged out of research by John Gottman and Robert Levinson. What they discovered after decades of researching couples, both in a lab setting. And over time with questionnaires was that couple who reported a high satisfaction with their relationships, meaning they didn't just stay together, but they were actually happy in their relationships where that they behaved in some very measurably different ways from couples who reported dissatisfaction in their relationships. One thing their research always included was observing their couples, talking about something together, where they were in disagreement. They observed that happy couples when engaged in a conflict conversation would have five positive interactions for every negative interaction in the conversation. When that ratio dipped below five to one couples reported increasing dissatisfaction. When the ratio was one to one or less, the relationship did not survive.
This five to one ratio is the first magic ratio I'm gonna talk to you about. This ratio might be familiar to you because it's often cited in articles about Gottman's research, but I wanna break it down a little more for you. First, you might be surprised that the ratio of positive to negative interactions needs to be that high. You might think that one positive interaction would cancel out a negative one, but neurobiologists and psychologists have found that we humans have something called a negativity bias. Our brains are wired to give more attention and weight to negative input than to positive input. We are generally more likely to believe criticism than praise, and we are more likely to dwell on negative interactions and let the positive ones go or just forget all about them. Researchers have found evidence for a negativity bias in children as young as one year old psychologists theorized that this tendency to pay more attention to the negative and dismiss or forget the positive might have had some evolutionary benefits in our distant past. Having a brain that is highly attuned to potential threats in your environment probably makes you more likely to respond to them quickly, giving you a greater chance of survival and successfully living along enough to reproduce.
Knowing this. It doesn't surprise me that to be happy, you need many positive interactions to not just balance out the negative ones, but to create an overall positive experience. What is surprising to me though, is that this five to one ratio, isn't the everyday ratio. This is the ratio of positive to negative interactions. When these couples fight you might imagine that if there are five positive interactions for every negative interaction in a fight that the conversation might not even really sound or feel like a fight. Well, okay, but let me just tell you if you've ever been to my house, you'd know that isn't true. And I've seen some of the footage from Dr. Gottman's research. People can be really negative, but also be very calm and sound, very not upset and not passionate. And people can also be constantly making repairs and showing compassion and responding to bids for connection, but also be speaking very heatedly about the things they're upset about.
You may have heard me say this before, but it's important to say again, it is not whether or not a couple fights, but how they fight that matters. Conflict is inevitable and avoiding confronting conflict also has significant costs in relationships. As I talked about on my rocking the boat episode, what this magic ratio shows is not that happy couples don't fight, but that they fight well. So here are some examples of negative interactions, things like attacks, criticism, statements about the person and their character sentences that start with "you are a", or "you're such a", making generalizations like "you always", or, "you never". Defensiveness, deflection, minimization, passing things off, putting it back on your partner, passive aggressiveness, sarcasm, eye rolling, and also expressing disinterest, withdrawing and stonewalling, going cold. These can all be really negative things that can happen in a fight.
It's important to note though, that expressing anger or expressing hurt isn't inherently negative. It all depends on how the anger is expressed or how the hurt is expressed and where it's directed. If your anger is leading you towards hurling criticism at your partner. Well, that isn't great. But if you're able to identify that a situation or a series of events is what's causing your anger, then it's easier to work through and address that problem together. Similarly, expressing that you're hurt can sometimes be experienced as an attack, but usually it's, if you're insisting that the person intended to hurt you or that it's their fault in some way, but just expressing your hurt and owning it as yours is actually quite vulnerable and gives your partner space to address the hurt and work towards repair. Next, here are some examples of positive interactions that can show up in a disagreement.
Things like showing interest in your partner's experience by asking questions or reflecting back what you're hearing, just simple expressions of affection, looking for places where you agree and highlighting those accepting your partner's perspective, which is different than agreeing with them, but just accepting. Hey, I can see why you feel that way. Empathizing and showing compassion for your partner's feelings. Being willing to accept, influence, being willing to negotiate, expressing warmth, and using humor, making jokes as long as they're not at anybody's expense, offering repair, where you can and asking how to make it. Now, these kinds of moves in a fight may be hard. If you tend to get flooded or triggered, if a conflict is something you avoid, or you tend to blow up or withdraw or shut down, that's likely because in a conflict your survival instincts are kicking in. When that happens, it can be hard to access the ability to an engage positively.
Even with someone you truly love. If you have noticed that you tend to either blow up or shut down in a conflict conversation, I encourage you to practice taking a break or taking steps to get calm and grounded before continuing the conversation, you'll be much more able to access some of these positive strategies. If you do, I will talk more about this on a subsequent episode, I'm actually gonna devote a whole episode to just this topic. So stay tuned. And I know I keep saying this by the way, but it really is true, I have a whole plan. I promise. But right now, what I wanna do is I wanna share with you the other magic ratio that showed up and Gottman and Levinson's research, which is that couples who reported being happy in their relationships were observed to have 20 positive interactions for every negative one when they were just hanging out.
I want you to just sit with that for a minute. Happy couples when they're fighting, have five positive interactions for every negative one. And when they're just hanging out, that ratio goes up to 20 to one. Whew! Does that sound overwhelming to you? I mean, the good news is that small positive interactions count a lot. What the researchers counted as a positive interaction could be something as simple as a partner saying, "Hey, it's sunny today". And their partner looking out the window and going, "yeah, it is". They would label that interaction as a positive one, as the partner, making a bid for connection and the other turning towards them. We make these kinds of bid for connection to each other all the time in our relationships. A lot of these are small mundane daily interactions, but the research shows that these interactions add up.
If they're positive, they build up into a relational bank account. But if they're negative, they're kind of like termites eating away at the floorboards, weakening the relationship over time. In my mind, keeping that positive ratio up goes back to being attuned, responsive, and accessible. If you're attuned, you'll notice when your partner's trying to connect. If you're responsive, you'll turn toward their bid for connection. And if you're accessible, you're going to be someone and who's ready to receive and respond to those bids. I think this second golden ratio might be more important than the first one. One risk of modern life is getting too busy, distracted, or overwhelmed to pick up on the bids for connection from people we love while I don't think being distracted or overwhelmed is endemic to being polyamorous. I also know that if you're poly saturated or possibly past your limit of people, that you can reasonably be attuned, responsive, and accessible to, you might run into a situation where you can't reliably fill all your partner's relational bank accounts.
And while there isn't really research yet to back this up, my belief is that while it's an advantage of polyamory, that you accept that one person can't meet all your needs, your relational bank account. Isn't something that you can just pool between partners. If you want your relationships to be happy and satisfying and fulfilling each individual bank account has to be filled up enough with positive interactions to be satisfying. I don't think this has to be hard, but it's worth keeping an eye on because sometimes we lose track of being attuned to our partners because we're just tapped out or over committed. And it can happen for all kinds of reasons. If you're a parent or you have a busy job or lots of social commitments or a whole host of other things, and if you're feeling tapped out instead of tuned in, or if you feel like your partner is, that isn't sustainable and it can cause your relationship to gradually decline or drift.
I would also encourage you to be mindful if you tend to try to keep your relationships positive, by avoiding conflict, or by pushing yourself to never have a bad day or not lean on your partners too hard. Or as people are saying a lot nowadays, like, I don't wanna ask you for too much emotional labor or something like that. I am always an advocate for picking your battles and getting grounded before bringing something up or asking for something you need. But as you know, I am also a fan of rocking the boat on the regular. And the research shows that if you can make those rocking the boat conversations, gentle and infuse them with positive interactions, then they won't even be negative experiences at all. I'll go so far as to say that handling conflict well and tackling problems together when things are hard or really being there for each other when times are tough, is some of the most fertile ground for intimacy and creating bonds that last.
But additionally, it's important to just continually look for our opportunities to turn towards your partners and per my last episode, be sure that you're expressing love in your partner's language and acknowledging the love that they show you wherever you can. We all get to have bad days too, but that's why it's so important that wherever we can, we're filling our partners relational bank accounts. And if we're not, or we're noticing that the small negative interactions are piling up, that might be a sign to take a deeper look at what's going on. So to recap, according to research couples who report being happy, have around 20 positive interactions for every negative one in their day to day lives and have about five. I have positive interactions for every negative one. When they're in a conflict, the Guttman Institute has also shown through their interventions that you can actually reverse engineer this in conflict. You can intentionally work to reduce negative interactions and learn to infuse the conversation with connection. You can also practice building and strengthening systems of fondness and admiration between you and your partner on a daily basis in a whole host of ways. One of which is tuning into each other more and turning towards each other when you each reach out with a bid for connection.
