Doing That Thing You Do (Redux)

Here’s a very simple idea for strengthening your relationship. It comes from many things I have written over the years about healthy sacrifices in relationships and marriage.

I think we all know of little things we could do that are good for our relationships that we are not likely to do on any given day. My emphasis on “little things” is very important. On most days, there are too many obstacles in the way of doing big things. Of course, big things are great to do from time to time, but big sacrifices require big opportunities that are rare. Small sacrifices do not require big opportunities. They are thoroughly and routinely doable.

If you want to apply this idea to your own relationship this week, here’s a little exercise for you. Take a few minutes of quiet time and think about some of the things you have done in the past for your partner that fit these characteristics.

1.  It is something under your control.

2.  It is something small that you can decide to do just about any day or week you want.

3.  It is something that you know is good for your relationship and that your partner tends to like.

4.  It is something you are NOT all that likely to do today or this week, even though you very well could.

Go ahead and write a few ideas down.

Challenge time. Commit to yourself to do one or two of the things you wrote down in the coming week.  Not 10. One or two. Develop some way to remind yourself and get after it.  Don’t tell your partner what you are doing, just do it. Your partner may or may not notice everything but he or she will probably notice some of these things. But that's not the point, really. The point is doing a few small things that are good for your relationship. Your relationship will be stronger for it.

If that works for you, try this idea out for a number of weeks (there’s not really any great reason to stop).

It’s point number 4 that really puts this idea into the realm of small but meaningful sacrifice. That’s because you are recognizing in yourself that you are not likely to do this very simple thing that you know your partner appreciates. You have to decide to go out of your way, a tiny bit, to follow through.

It’s not the thought that counts. Ideas that are never put into action may be thoughtful but they are not effective. Your mission is to do something.

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(Redux—Edited from version first posted on 4-27-2009. We now include this idea in many of our books and relationship education materials because we believe it's simple and effective.)

weCloud: Thoughts on Leaf Blowers vs. Brooms

Whatever happened to brooms? I know they still exist. We actually have a couple of them around our house, and, shocker, we use them. We have two regular sized ones; one for indoors and one for out. We also have a big ole push-broom for the patio and side walk and such.

I think about brooms whenever I see lawn care people out and about using leaf blowers to “clean up” after mowing a lawn. Have you ever thought about this? This style of “cleaning up” is not “sweeping up” nor, if there must be a noisy machine, even vacuuming up. What we all see instead is the (now) common practice of just blowing the crud all over the place—into the street, onto cars, into the air, or back into the lawn.

Just to be clear. I’m not super green. In fact, I’ve been around the block and know a thing or two—just like those amazing men in the Viagra commercials who can do anything because they are at the age of knowing how. (I’m not just like them, by the way. Just sayin. Um, got sidetracked. I am at the age of being sidetracked.)

That’s not what I mean by green. I meant I’m not a big enviro type. I do pretty seriously recycle and I try to use energy efficient stuff where I can. You could say I’m enviro-conscious and responsible but it’s not my big deal in life. But I do get annoyed with all these leaf blowing machines. For one thing, they are loud. That bugs me. I have sensitive hearing which I am trying to preserve for rock and roll and, you know, listening to people and all. But it does actually bother me to see all the dirt and dust and detritus regularly being blown into the air. It’s got to cause a short-term, serious spike in at least some type of air pollution for that immediate area.

Today, while driving home from work, I happened to notice one lawn guy blowing all the crud into the air in a tidy little cloud that was hovering around his coworker—who did not seem to notice or mind. Cough, hack, “thanks Jack.” No mask.  

Oddly enough, I have an idea about marriage and relationships here. I think a lot of couples never actually sweep up their messes. They mostly just make a lot of noise and blow all the dirt all over each other, the kids, and maybe the neighborhood. They don’t have to live that way.

I know we’re all increasingly living in “the” cloud; at least everyone keeps saying they have all their stuff there. (By the way, I think it was the Rolling Stones who, long ago, first sung about the now common topic of security in the Cloud. “Hey, hey, You, you . . ..”) Serious point arrives now. Recognize that, in your relationship, you don’t have to live in a dirty haze. Instead of living in weCloud, try a broom. Sweep some stuff up and throw it out. Do your part. In fact, if you sweep up a bit and put the dirt in a bag, in most places, nice people will come by within a week and cart it away. Doesn’t that sound good? I’m not saying it’s easy to sweep up messes, but it is doable. Now, think creatively about what the metaphor means for you and your relationship.

Brooms. They’re gonna be big. 

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Eat and Drink What You Want: The Pre-Commitment Diet

I have an idea for a new diet. I won’t sell any books about it, though, because it’s not really about cutting calories or losing weight. And it’s bad marketing to announce that your diet does not help you lose weight. This diet is most relevant to times when you are eating out with friends or business acquaintances. The pre-commitment diet is about increasing your odds of eating what you want most and drinking what you want, when you are out with others. Of course, I’m not really interested in meals out, beer, or diets, in this blog. It’s about relationships. Here, I’m laying down some principles for upcoming posts.

I like to mention books that I have enjoyed or found interesting. Another of the books I’ve liked a lot in the past year is one by a behavioral economist named Dan Ariely. The book is called Predictably Irrational (the title is a link if you are interested). Ariely’s specialty is examining the ways in which people do not behave quite rationally in all kinds of situations. One of the very interesting things about Ariely’s work is that he devises inventive ways to test various ideas and theories. His book is really a series of descriptions of these interesting experiments, followed by discussion of the principles they highlight and what it may mean to the reader. I will cover one of his studies here that happens to be based on beer. I’ll expand the application for relationships of this study on beer in the next post. After that, I’ll write about one of his studies that is focused on sex.

(By the way, I am not unaware of the probability that blogs that contain the words “diet,” “beer,” and “sex” are likely to draw some attention. In fact, maybe someone reading will have gotten here by Googling those three words at the same time. As you’ll see, beer is not really my focus, but I do want to describe his experiment and it is about beer.)

Ariely’s beer experiment was focused on the orders people made in a pub near MIT (Ariely worked at MIT at the time, not the pub). He and his colleague were allowed to run this experiment in this pub. The idea was pretty simple. He was testing the idea that, when in a group, the beer orders the first people to order make affect the beer orders others, who follow, will make. I don’t mean people across the bar, but people in the same group. So, imagine a setting where persons A, B, C, D, & E are out relaxing, and they are all going to order a beer. To make things simple, let’s assume they are going to order their beers in alphabetical order, so person A is up first.

What did Ariely find? The first person in the group who orders a beer is the one most likely to get the beer she wanted and to like the beer she got. How can this be? We’ll, it turns out that in social settings, like this pub setting with college students, that people like to be unique and special. If person D wanted beer X, but persons A & C already ordered beer X, person D will feel some pressure to be unique and cool, and get a different beer even though he wanted beer X. Being unique and cool is not always groovy. Person A, having no one going before her, gets the beer she really wanted all along because she’s not affected by anyone else’s order.

(By the way, again: It’s studies like this that make me completely mistrust focus groups as ways of gathering information. Unless the setting is just right and the interviewer super skilled, how can what the first people say not affect the validity of what others who follow will say? Are you getting the real opinion of those who speak after several others have spoken? I bet not. This is also pretty good confirmation of the importance of secret ballots.)

Okay, application time: Ariely found that if you had persons A, B, C, D, & E each write down their order on paper, privately, everyone would get the beer they wanted most and would report being more satisfied. This is where the term “pre-commitment” comes in. By pre-commitment, I’m not talking about what builds up to commitment. I’m talking about pre-committing yourself to what you want—or what you think you should do—BEFORE you are in a situation where the circumstances and people might sway you to do, or choose, something other than what you really want or really think you should do.

The pre-commitment diet I have in mind is about deciding ahead of the time that others place their orders what you want and then sticking to it. So, my pre-commitment diet is mostly about getting what you want when you order, not about losing weight. But, if could lead to weight loss if your pre-commitment was about what you were going to order because it had fewer calories.

There is great power in deciding ahead of time what you are about and what you mean to do. Otherwise, the situation or social pressure might lead you to slide into something other than what you wanted to have happen in the first place.

Next time, I’ll focus on that principle when it comes to relationships. And after that, we’ll get to sex. I’m pre-committing to write about that.

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Doing That Thing You Do

Last post, I said I’d say a bit more about healthy sacrifices in relationships and how a person can step it up in a positive way. My idea for today is really simple. I think most all of us know of things we could do, that are easy to do, that when we do do, it make a positive difference in our relationships. My emphasis is on “little things,” and that is very important. There are too many things that can get in the way of doing big things on any given day. Of course, big things are great to do from time to time, but many big sacrifices require big opportunities that you cannot (or should not) try to make happen. Small sacrifices do not require big opportunities. They are thoroughly and routinely doable.

If you want to apply this idea to your own relationship today (and in the coming weeks), here’s a little exercise for you. Take a few minutes of quiet time and think about some of the things you have done in the past that fit these characteristics.

1. It’s something under your control.

2. It’s something small that you can decide to do just about any day or week you want.

3. It’s something that you know is good for your relationship and that your partner tends to like.

4. It’s something you are NOT that likely to do today or this week, even though you very well could.

It’s the last one of these four things that puts this into the realm of a small but meaningful sacrifice. You have to do something other than what you’d naturally do to get it done. You have to decide and follow through.

Go ahead and write a few ideas down that fit what I’m describing.

Challenge time. Commit to yourself to do one or two of those things you wrote down in the coming week. Not 10. One or two. Develop some way to remind yourself and get after it. Don’t tell your partner what you are doing, just do it. Your partner may or may not notice everything like this that you do, but he or she will notice some of these things and your relationship will be stronger for it.

You mission, should you choose to accept it? Do Do.

Making Love

Some years back, I wrote an essay on the power of healthy sacrifice in romantic relationships. It appeared in a wonderful book that is now out of print, entitled “Why Do Fools Fall In Love,” edited by Jan Levine and my colleague Howard Markman. Compared to more scientifically focused pieces I have written or presented on sacrifice, this was a purely conceptual argument about the power of positive types of sacrifice. What I present in this post are excerpts from that essay, called Afterglow.

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We live in a culture saturated with constructions of love defined as passion. Passion is dominant because passion is powerful. What person does not either desire it, bask in the glory of it realized, or grieve over the loss of it in life? Passion’s potency arises from the promise, whether obtained or not, of the deep acceptance of one’s soul. Passion hints at the possibility of a soul mate. But there is something more powerful than passion—something that passion is incomplete without.

For most people, passion at its height resembles something like the birth of a fire on dry wood: great fury and heat, crackling flames leaping high. The start of such a fire is magnificent. My focus here is not on the great fire, but on the coals that are begun from it. It is the long burning coals and embers that sustain the promise of heat and fire to come.

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However, what sustains the pile of coals with their promise and warmth? What is the force of the more complete love? There are many answers one could give, but I want to I focus on sacrifice.

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What does passion lack that sacrifice makes up for? Passion lacks the ability to be directed by your will. That’s probably why we are all so deeply affected by passion—it is captivating. Sacrifice comes from the active, choosing part of love based in your will. You can choose to love in this way because you can choose to do loving acts. In an important way, sacrifice balances passion in the hearth of love.