Educ 216: The Path to Happiness and Healthier Relationships

Hugging my best friend at her goodbye party before she had to move back to California

This class taught by Dr. Jaclyn Lally introduced me to the Gottman Institute’s guidelines for healthy relationships, which left a huge impact on me. Famous for its comprehensive studies on relationships, the Love Lab revealed that couples are more likely to have successful, long-lasting relationships when following certain practices, these being some of many that build “the Sound Relationship House”. 

I was first introduced to the concepts of emotional bids and love maps, which build up the layers of this house that builds sound relationships. Emotional bids can be made by anybody, consciously or subconsciously. An example could be when your friend sits next to you and sighs. Whether they realize it or not, the sigh is an emotional bid for connection. Then we have options of how we respond (or not). We could ignore the friend’s sigh and continue with what we were doing. Another option is to  say, “Hey, what’s up?” This opens a door for relational connection. We have the choice to respond actively or passively, positively or negatively. It was helpful for me to remember too that sometimes we don’t have the capacity to respond to every emotional bid for connection, and that’s okay. What’s important is to be aware of these emotional bids so we can be more intentional in our choices to support others and also make emotional bids when we need emotional support and want to build relational connection. Over time, I began noticing my interactions with my friends and housemates. I realized ways I could be more supportive, that I could be more loving to my roommate by responding to her emotional bids. When I did this, I saw the direct impact of us becoming closer in our friendship. This success makes me more excited about connecting with people now that I can be more intentionally present and caring.

In addition, the topics connected directly with my work at LiveWell, where we were leading workshops about relationships, conflict, and communication. I learned about the four horsemen of unhealthy relationships— contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Immediately, I was required to teach others about it too. The more I taught it, the more I realized how important it is for people to be educated on social emotional skills and to be able to put names to some unhelpful behaviors so we can avoid them. 

With this new knowledge, I feel more confident entering difficult conversations where people have different perspectives than I do, and I see my tendencies to get defensive when I feel I am being attacked. Being aware of those tendencies helps me to tackle them and replace them with healthy, gentle ways of pursuing understanding with people.