Do You Smell That?

I love getting my home “in order” for the week. One way I do this is running errands on Mondays. This is the day I get a lot of things checked off the to-do list. Turning  inecycling, paying bills, mailing off packages, and grocery shopping. I enjoy this weekly “Day of Errands.” It gets me out of the house and I’m sometimes able to squeeze in my favorite thrift store.

The "focus faces" you use when
working towards your goals.

By the time I get through my mile-long list, plus the unloading that needs to be done, the reality of making dinner is but a fairy tale. High hopes for a delicious homemade meal dissolve. The pending result? A disappointing night of leftovers, cereal, or an expensive pizza pick-up. Funny enough, we could be setting ourselves up for this same disappointment, but in our marriages.

In Dr. Gottman’s book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, he talks about people who have the highest-quality marriages are those who have high expectations for them. "By holding your relationship to high standards, you are far more likely of achieve the kind of marriage you want than you are by looking the other way and letting things slide.” We need to catch ourselves when we let our expectations (or dinners) go to the wayside.

The BEST team mate!
So much so, I just gotta kiss him!

Now, if only there was a tool that could pick-up on this sliding…. Well, we do! And Dr. Gottman calls it the “Marital Poop Detector.” It will vary couple to couple, but might involve someone “sniffing out trouble” and then kindly, non-critically discussing how the relationship is doing. Using the “Marital Poop Detector” allows couples to, “talk about issues in your relationship while they are still minor, before they build up steam and become combustible.” When approached appropriately, with “softened start-ups and without being critical, issues can be diffused and dissolved.

My husband Neal and I (I like to think) have high expectations for ourselves. I think this is true for many people of our same belief; we get married planning on forever. With this in mind, we set goals in all aspects of our lives. Using Gottman’s “detector” can help us take emotional inventory of our relationship to see how we are faring. It provides us the opportunity to help show our love and support for each other in pursuit of our goals.

Thankfully, this whole marriage thing is a team effort. Neither one of us is the “full-time sniffer” and we are here to support one another. This is true in our long-term martial goals or dinner planning. Just like how cooking at home is better on the wallet and the body, using our detectors can be better on our marriage and our future together.