Relationship Problems: Solvable or Perpetual?

"Relationship problems" is apparently an oxymoron. Relationship means problems according to John Gottman, PhD.


Some of those problems are solvable and well worth the effort to solve, but others are not solvable and efforts to change those things can actually be destructive.


How so? Aren't there lots of perfectly happy couples who have been together for a very long time? Are they just hiding these problems?


Yes, there certainly are lots of happy couples, but they aren't without their disagreements. It looks like one of the big things those couples have accomplished is finding ways that the inevitable frictions from two people of two different backgrounds and/or personal styles can be together without having to solve unsolvable problems.


The key seems to be in knowing the difference between problems you can change and those that you can't. From there, a sense of humor helps a lot as well as having effective ways of defusing anger and moving back toward each other after a conflict.


A particularly noteworthy bit of data from Gottman's studies is that 69% of problems that couples have are of the non-solvable, perpetual type. Hmm.




A sense of humor and mutual respect. . . . Don't come home without them.

Alcohol Problems Over 50 are Relationship Problems

Alcohol problems become relationship problems very quickly and aging makes us more likely to have alcohol problems.


Why? Because our body's ability to deal with the alcohol seems to go down with age making the same amount of alcohol have a greater effect as we get older.


The slip toward drinking too much for us, too much for maintaining our relationships, can really sneak up on us. First, it happens slowly so it may not be noticeable for a long time. And, second, there's something about alcohol use that makes it incredibly difficult to see trouble brewing in ourselves.


As we get older, it is not a bad idea to look at some of the screening questions that professionals ask in assessing risk of alcohol problems. You can find some basic ones here.


Also, it's all relative.


An alcohol counselor friend once told me that the simplest screening is just to ask someone how much they drink. I asked him if they wouldn't tell you a lower amount than they really drink. His response surprised me. I thought he'd say that they have some tricky way to ask or some factor they increase the amount by or something. He said, "People with drinking problems rarely think they have drinking problems and therefore they almost always give an accurate account of how much they drink because they don't see it as abnormal."


So, we aren't likely to see alcohol problems in ourselves, but there are tools to help us take a better look.

Still Working On Relationship Problems?or perhaps trying to avoid the working?

Believe it or not, there are good reasons to believe that the second choice is more effective.

If all the taping, wiring, watching in John Gottman's relationship lab out there in rainy, gray Seattle has brought us any new information on relationships, it may be that the simple things count the most.

Take away the operational definitions and big words and those studies look to me like they suggest that being friends, treating each other from positive assumptions will go further than deep understanding and psychological explanations.

If it's feelilng like work, we're probably going at it the wrong way!

That's good news. Even for us natural grumps.

In fact, when I finish this post I am going over to my website and change my page description from "working through relationship problems" to . . . . . . . well . . . I'm not sure. Maybe something will come to me. Any ideas?

Fixing Relationship Problems? Maybe Not The Best Plan

Got a relationship problem? Roll up your sleeves and go to work on that sucker. Talk it over, analyze it, work it out. RIGHT???

If you ignore problems, they just get worse. RIGHT??

Well, yes and no.

If your relationship isn't running on all cylinders you're going to know it, because you're going to have problems. True. Putting your attention on the problem, however, doesn't have a very good success record.


Have you ever watched kids playing soccer and wondered why so many times they kick the ball right to the goalie? They want to put the ball into the goal, but they have a problem. Their problem is that there is a player standing there who does not want them to get the ball into the goal. What they tend to do is get their attention locked onto the obstacle and when they kick, it goes right where they don't want it to go. With intention and enough practice it is possible for them to learn to focus on where they want the ball to go, into an empty space inside the goal, and their effectiveness goes up, but it is hard to learn.

It's the same thing with relationships. Focus on problems and that's where we'll end up, right in the arms of the problems. Focus on where we want to be and our chance of getting there goes way up.

Get more information on specific ways that this can be done for relationships here.

Is Working On Relationship Problems the Wrong Way to Go?

Relationship problems are real attention grabbers.

It's hard not to figure that if I could just work this or that thing out, get her to stop do this, start doing that, maybe even do some starting or stopping of a few things myself (or maybe not), then life would be good. Wouldn't it?

Well, maybe, maybe not, but probably not. In fact, I am convinced that hashing out problems the way most of us go at it is a dead end. A miserable dead end at that.

Why? There are different ideas on that that you can check out here.

But the general idea is that relationship problems, like ideas of compatibility, are a good indication that something is wrong. It's just that trying to solve them rarely works (never? nothing never happens, but almost never).

Relationship Problems and Heart Disease

In a just released study that followed over 9,000 British civil servants for more than 12 years it was reported that people in couples with relationship problems were more likely to develop heart disease.

Do bad relationships equal heart disease? I don't know.

Take a look at the study itself which was in Archives of Internal Medicine, Volume 167, Number 18, October 8, 2008, page 1951 - 1957.

Actually, there are studies that point in the other direction. And, of course, the other from that one.

Bottom line question, I guess, is "How do you want to live, whether it gives you heart disease or not?"