How can you strengthen your relationship through appreciation? What role does negativity bias play in our partnerships?
Relationship researchers Julie Schwartz Gottman and John Gottman have found that successful couples excel at noticing and acknowledging kind deeds, rather than simply performing more of them. They discuss showing appreciation by being more positive and complimentary.
Continue reading to learn how to appreciate your partner in meaningful ways.
Appreciating Your Partner
According to the authors, successful couples don’t necessarily do more kind deeds for each other, but they’re better at noticing and acknowledging them when they occur. They offer advice on how to appreciate your partner, discussing the importance of overcoming negativity bias and giving meaningful compliments.
Overcome Negativity Bias to Appreciate Your Partner
We all have a negativity bias. This is our tendency to view things—in this case, our partners—with a negatively skewed perspective. This negativity is programmed into our evolutionary design: Noticing problems helps our survival.
Because we’re naturally wired to focus on the problems in our lives, we commonly fail to notice our partner’s kind and helpful acts, and we often assume the worst when a chore isn’t done or they miss an important event. We’re also subject to our partner’s negativity bias, so we feel frustrated that our own efforts go unnoticed. All of this can cause resentment to accumulate and accelerate a negative feedback loop that fuels more and more negativity.
The Gottmans explain that, when we feel our partner is unkind or unhelpful, it’s typically not that our partner needs to do positive things more often (though this can sometimes be true). The Gottmans cite research showing that participants failed to notice an average of 50% of the kind or helpful deeds their partner performed. The researchers found that the difference between happy and unhappy couples wasn’t that happy ones were doing more kind deeds for each other—it was that happy couples were better at noticing and acknowledging kind deeds when they happened.
How to Retrain Your Brain for Positivity
The Gottmans explain that, to combat negativity bias, you need to train your brain to see the positive things your partner does. Not only will this help you and your partner feel appreciated for what you do, but it will help you notice and appreciate all of the good things your partner does. By promoting appreciation instead of criticism, you’ll cultivate a healthier relationship.
In their research, the Gottmans found that during conflicts, successful couples share five positive interactions for every negative one. Positive interactions might look like an empathetic comment, a smile, or a compliment. Negative interactions include criticism and blaming. As for regular interactions (not in conflict), the Gottmans found that successful couples have 20 positive interactions for every negative one.
Fortunately, we can retrain our thoughts to be more positive because our brains are neuroplastic: highly malleable and capable of change. Neuroplasticity allows us to form new thought patterns and consciously train our brains to see our relationships in a brighter light.
Let’s explore two of the Gottmans’ tips for retraining your brain to appreciate your partner.
Tip 1: Watch your partner closely and focus on the positive things they do. Pay attention to even their routine, mundane-seeming tasks. Express your gratitude for the things you notice.
Tip 2: Switch who does which household chores. For instance, if your partner typically cares for your houseplants, try it for a day. Doing so will help you appreciate and thank them for the nuanced effort and thoughtfulness that their tasks require.
Give Your Partner a Good Compliment
Beyond expressing gratitude for your partner’s actions, it’s also important to recognize and compliment your partner’s character. So, reflect on the character traits you most admire about your partner and share these with them as often as you think of them.
The Gottmans explain that focusing on what you value in your partner is better for your relationship than trying to change your partner’s areas of growth. Character flaws are inevitable and difficult to change, so shifting your perspective is a more sustainable path to a happy relationship. In a study where the Gottmans kept in touch with over 3,000 couples for 20 years, they found that happy, successful couples who stay together long-term can readily name qualities they admire about their partners.
(Shortform note: One therapist further explains that when you express admiration for your partner’s character traits, you contribute to their sense of emotional safety. Emotional safety—feeling comfortable being your authentic self without fear of rejection—is fundamental to a stable and loving partnership. Thus, a sustaining force in the 3,000 couples referenced by the Gottmans above could be the emotional security that participants developed when they reinforced their partner’s sense of self-worth through compliments. This therapist further explains that you can boost emotional safety by reassuring your partner that you accept their character flaws. This makes them comfortable to be themselves and deepens your bond.)
Here are two tips the Gottmans provide to help you give your partner meaningful compliments:
- Reflect on what attracted you to your partner in the first place. What about them grabbed your attention and won your heart? Let your partner know when they demonstrate these qualities.
- List the qualities you most admire about your partner, and let them know any time they manifest these in your daily life together.
(Shortform note: If you’d prefer a more structured process when reflecting on your partner’s positive qualities, you could try one expert’s advice to journal about these qualities. Choose one quality you value about your partner to write about every day for 14 days. Or, mix approaches and try journaling about the prompts posed by the Gottmans above.)
Exercise: Retrain Your Brain to Appreciate Your Partner
The Gottmans explain that to combat negativity bias, you need to train your brain to see the positive things your partner does. By promoting appreciation instead of criticism, you’ll cultivate a healthier relationship.
- Describe something your partner recently did that made a positive impact on you. How did it make you feel?
- Write about why the act they performed made a positive impact on you. For example, say you appreciate the effort they invested in preparing dinner. Let them know that the extra time they took to chop the vegetables thin the way you like makes you love them more.
- Now that you’ve identified something you appreciate about your partner, write about how and when you can share this with them.
