Four Ways to Practice Generosity in Marriage

In this article, The Two Most Important Skills in Marriage, we talked about practicing kindness in marriage. The second most important skill is to practice generosity in marriage.

Generosity consists of creating a culture of positivity in your relationship. It’s an intentional response that you thread throughout interactions with your spouse.  It’s especially important during interactions that hold the potential for conflict.  For example, your spouse wants to talk, but you are tired and exhausted.  Or, your spouse is short or impatient with you, and you are tempted to respond similarly.  When you want to go out with friends, but your spouse has to work late again.  Disasters of marriage take these moments and ratchet them into cycles of negativity and criticism.  Masters take these moments and apply generosity to the relationship.

The Gottmans call this “generosity of spirit”.  They explain that it is a habit of mind masters of marriage have where they are always scanning the social environment for things they can appreciate. They purposefully build a culture of respect and fondness, looking for things they can say thank you for. Disasters of marriage are scanning the social environment for their partner’s mistakes and looking for the negative.  This leads to expressing criticism or contempt rather appreciation or fondness.  Generosity of spirit is a skill that you can develop and intentionally practice to develop generosity in marriage.

Here are four ways to build generosity in marriage.

1. Make a list of what you admire and appreciate about your spouse.

I will often ask couples in therapy to write a list of 10-20 things that they appreciate about their spouse and review that list daily.  I then ask them to look for moments during the week that their spouse does one of the things on their list.  This helps the brain make the connection between what is appreciated in the abstract and what is happening in real life. Increasing your ability to notice what is good in your partner is what creates the “feel good” emotions in the relationship.  It’s a skill that leads to a culture of positivity in your marriage.

2. Respond to Bids for Connection

This is a cornerstone in the Gottman’s research and it looks like this.  You are sitting at the kitchen table looking at your phone and your spouse makes a comment about the roses blooming outside the window.  She is making a statement about roses, but the reality is she is also making a bid for connection with you.  How you respond actually reveals a lot about the relationship. If you put your phone down, look at the roses, and comment in return you are responding positively to her bid by “turning toward” her.  If you don’t respond, respond minimally, or respond harshly you are “turning away” from the bid.

In his research, Gottman found that couples who had a “turn toward” response rate of 33% were divorced.   The couples who had a “turn toward” response of 87% were still married. You could conclude that masters of marriage are meeting needs for closeness by responding to bids for connection roughly 9 times out of 10.  Disasters are getting these needs met only 3 out of 10 times.  This is how the little moments in marriage make an enormous difference in the overall quality of the relationship.  It also shows that the little moments are crucial in determing whether a couple will stay together or get divorced.  When a couple is turning towards each other by positively responding to bids for connection, a culture of positivity consumes the marriage.   This culture makes it easier for a couple to practice kindness and generosity in marriage.

3. Don’t Take it Personally

It’s a frequent occurrence to have couples in cycles of negativity because they are taking things personally that just are not personal.  He thinks that she left her shoes by the front door just to irritate and annoy him.  She thinks he leaves the toilet seat up to torture her in the middle of the night. From the couch in my counseling office I have heard a phrase like this countless times, “How many times have I told him/her that I don’t like this and he/she continues to do it anyway just to annoy me”.  Often, couples take personally differences in opinion or practice–from the how to get the toothpaste out of the tube to how to fold laundry appropriately. These differences in marriage escalate into criticism and contempt when they are given a personal message. Little annoyances have the opportunity to erode the feelings of closeness in marriage. But, they are also opportunities to practice generosity of spirit in order to build generosity in marriage. They are opportunities to draw from the positive culture you have created to deflect any irritants that may seem personal.

So, don’t sweat the small stuff and don’t take the small stuff personally. Try to avoid making negative attributions about the everyday irritants that occur in relationship.  Try covering those with generosity in marriage.

4. Believe the Best

Sometimes people do the right thing at the wrong time; like the husband who started vacuuming right after the baby fell asleep. Or, they do a good thing in a clumsy or messy way, like the wife who fixed the mower, but left the tools out in the back yard. Sometimes a person does something helpful, but it just isn’t the way you would have chosen to do it. Like the spouse who cleans as they cook vs the spouse who leaves a messy kitchen and a sink full of dishes.  These are all examples of times when generosity of spirit can remind us of the big picture and helps us believe the best. Choose to believe that the motivation and intention that spurred the behavior comes from a good place–even if it was done at the wrong time, clumsily, or differently than you would do it.  Love hopes all things, believes all things, and always looks for the best (I Cor 13).

The Proverbs say that whoever covers an offense seeks love and Peter tells us that “Love covers a multitude of sins”.  Generosity in marriage is never about ignoring problem areas in your marriage, but it is about making the choice to cover with love the differences and annoyances that have the potential to drive us apart.   Masters of marriage practice generosity. They are constantly scanning their partner for what is good, and looking for what is going well in the relationship.

Read More:

Two Most Important Skills for Marriage

The Two Most Important Skills for Marriage

The two most important skills for marriage.

When I was growing up, one of my dad’s favorite phrases was “why can’t people just be nice to each other?”. His belief was that a little kindness would revolutionize relationships, business meetings, and churches. He believed  that conflicts would be avoided and problems would be solved if people were simply nice.  It turns out, he was right.  The leading researchers on marriage agree with him.

Kindness and generosity are the most important skills for marriage

Psychologists John and Julie Gottman have devoted their lives to researching and studying what they refer to as the “masters and disasters” of relationships. They found that the most crucial abilities necessary for becoming a master at marriage are kindness and generosity. The reason for this is that kindness and generosity act as antidotes to the deadly elements in a marriage: contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling (More on these in a later post, but for more information see this article on The Four Horseman).

The keys to being a master in marriage

When contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling are present in a marriage, you are on the road to disaster. On the other hand, kindness and generosity build a layer of protection into your relationship. Kindness and generosity create a barrier that counteracts what is bad while simultaneously building what is good. Closeness, trust, marital friendship, and teamwork all depend on kindness and generosity. Do you want to be a master at marriage? If so, as my dad would say, just be nice to each other.

The two most important skills for marriage are simple, but not easy

If being nice sounds simple–it’s because it is. But simple does not mean easy. If there is a culture of defensiveness or criticism in your marriage, it can be extremely difficult to engage in kind and generous behavior towards each other. This is where training for the most important skills for marriage becomes invaluable. Just as a basketball player repetitively practices the fundamentals of passing, shooting, and dribbling; kindness and generosity are fundamental skills that can be practiced in much the same way. As with basketball, these skills are so basic, you will never win at marriage unless you develop them. This takes intentional and repetitive practice.

Kindness and generosity are a muscle

Think of kindness and generosity as a muscle: the more you use them, the stronger they become. It doesn’t take as much effort to lift the same amount of weight 8 weeks into your exercise program as it did in the beginning. It becomes easier and starts to feel more natural. You are able to do more with less. So it is with developing the muscles of kindness and generosity.

Next week, I will give you some practical ways to develop and practice the two most important skills for marriage.