- Positive Perspective: Moving From Commiseration to Connection - January 13, 2026
- Your Problem vs Our Problem: Shifting to the “We” Perspective - November 26, 2025
- How To Rebuild Trust After Betrayal (Even If It Feels Impossible) - October 15, 2025
Why We Bond Through Shared Commiseration
Does anyone else feel like they bond with others through shared commiseration? I bet you can recall a time. When you are with your friends, have you not complained about another friend? When you are with your family, there is always someone else in the family to be talked about. When you are with your partner, you complain about your day and the stress of life. I would even bargain to say that your Discover page on social media is full of shared commiseration with strangers about our society at large. My point is: it is a natural habit for us as humans to commiserate and be negative, and that is something that bonds us to others who have a shared experience and can relate. For some of us, it feels more natural to gravitate toward the negative perspective rather than the positive perspective.
How Does That Impact Your Relationship?
When we think about having a negative perspective, we might not think that it is that big of a deal. It can be funny to be a bit cynical. But let’s start to think about the positive and negative perspectives through the lens of the Gottmans.
The Positive Perspective
A mindset where positive feelings are strong enough to outweigh negative experiences, so you interpret your partner’s actions more favorably.
You are more likely to give your partner the benefit of the doubt.
You view your partner as your best friend, an ally.
It is easier to manage conflict, you are on the same team.
The Negative Perspective
A mindset where negative feelings are strong enough to interpret neutral or positive actions as negative, viewing your partner as an adversary and not accepting their influence.
You are more likely to lean towards criticism or contempt for your partner’s actions.
You may feel like your partner is working against you.
Conflict becomes more difficult because you may feel you do not have influence and you may not allow for your partner to have influence.
Let’s go back to the idea that we can facilitate a bond through shared commiseration. It is easy to do this when we both have those negative feelings towards something else (like when we are driving together and someone cuts us off, that person sucks). However, if one or both of us tends to lean towards that negative perspective and now we start to feel it towards each other, it no longer becomes a bond and now becomes something that separates us.
Think of it like this: maybe I often like to point out negative experiences and my partner used to commiserate with me. That would make me feel close to them. Now imagine we have been dating for some time, and I start to bring up the negative interactions that happen between the two of us. I might make a few jokes about how they never make the bed properly or how the dishes always still seem dirty after they wash them. Over time, that might start to sound like criticism or contempt to my partner. How would they respond? Maybe they would get defensive. Now we are having an argument about the dishes when I thought we would both laugh. This no longer feels like something that brings us closer. I believe this happens because we as people naturally oscillate between the positive and negative perspective, but we often live in one state more frequently than the other. And many things impact this, such as daily stressors or growth/change as an individual.
Your Mental Health May Impact Perspective
I would like to make the space to speak on how we as individuals show up differently in our relationships based on our own overall wellbeing. It is becoming more apparent that we as people experience our own mental health difficulties that are sometimes very obvious but often very subtle. As we enter this new year, we are (literally) past the darkest days of our seasonal cycle. How many of you feel impacted by seasonal depression? For some, it does not seem like a big deal. “Everyone” feels a little down during the winter because there is not as much sun, we might not be going outside as often. We have normalized it. But do we really know how it might impact our day to day?
For those that already experience depression, the season can exacerbate feelings of sadness, hopelessness, worthlessness, irritability, and loss of pleasure in activities. It also increases social withdrawal. We may not think of social withdrawal impacting our romantic relationships because we see each other everyday, so that cannot be social withdrawal from our partner. But could we say no more often to engaging in activities together, even inside the home? Could we tend to have more tense interactions over “the little things?” Of course. So it does impact our relationship and allows us to gravitate towards the negative perspective more often.
Imagine the impact this has when one partner is more impacted by their mental health than the other. It creates a divide because when we struggle on our own it is easy to believe the other person does not understand and cannot help.
Not to mention, this just naturally happens during the most stressful time for the year for most people. So not only do we generally not feel as interested in being around others, but society tells us that we need to be around others during this time of year. Thank you, holidays. This makes the rebound into the new year and the mindset of “new year, new me” so difficult to actually engage in. So I’m here to give you an out. I don’t need you to be a whole new person, but maybe there are small ways we can start to shift.
How Can We Shift to the Positive Perspective?
The Gottman’s are notorious for their “antidotes” to common difficulties we experience in relationships. So of course, they have their antidote for how to help shift from the negative perspective to the positive perspective and it seems so simple. We have to work on the friendship.
For the Gottman’s a couple’s friendship foundation is built on three key concepts: building love maps, sharing fondness and admiration, and turning towards bid for connection. So let’s explore some ways to strengthen these areas.
Express Fondness and Admiration
Be mindful that expressing fondness and admiration for your partner is different than complimenting them.
Share appreciations for the type of person they are and the qualities that they have.
“I appreciate how thoughtful you are when you plan our weekends out, it lets us have more consistent quality time.”
Create Rituals of Connection
Rituals of connection are the things we do to dedicate time to our relationship.
Often we either stop making time for them (life gets busy) or we do the same things we have been doing and they no longer feel like opportunities for connection.
Updating Love Maps comes in handy here, because I need to know what my partner currently defines as a ritual of connection.
Now we can be consistent on how often we do these activities. We can even schedule them out to help hold us accountable as we readjust to the habit.
Turn Towards Bids for Connection
Bids for connection are the things we do to get our partner to engage with us, and we want to be more mindful of turning towards these.
Similar to rituals of connection, we want to make sure we know what our partner’s typical bid for connection looks like.
A very general bid can look like that daily check in of “how was your day?” Are you making eye contact with your partner? Did you put your phone down? It is small changes like that that show us turning towards our partner.
Utilize Effective Communication Skills
There is such a thing as “a better way” to bring something up. The Gottman’s teach The Gentle Start Up as a way to decrease criticism. This is a way to express our own feelings and ask for our own needs.
I need to be aware when I am not in a place to have an in depth conversation.
I have to be open to accepting my partner’s influence.
Taking Small Steps Toward the Positive Perspective
Now I know I started this by saying I’m giving you an out to not have to completely change and then shared several areas in which you may have to change. But my ask is for you to be mindful of 1-2 ways you can shift your behaviors in each category. And then be consistent about that shift before taking on more. Set small goals to achieve the bigger goal. Start taking steps towards the positive perspective.