Mutual respect, mutual support, and reciprocity are among the most important cornerstones of a healthy and strong relationship. Supporting each other equally can help you have a happier and more fulfilling relationship.
the main points
Couples who feel unsupported by their partner may be missing out on a key element that creates mutuality: providing support.
Positive relationships require being open to receiving support and being able to offer it to the other person.
Building relationship awareness involves developing an awareness of your own feelings, desires, goals, and those of your partner.
Jill and Dan settled down at opposite ends of the big sofa in my office, across from where I’m sitting. They told me they wanted help with their chronic dissatisfaction – not getting the support they wanted and needed from another. I ask for examples, and they both jump in quickly:
“She didn’t act very supportive the whole day that my mom died,” Jill said. “It really hurts me, because you weren’t there for me. You even went to a meeting that same night, instead of staying with me, when I needed you. It’s moments like that – I think you’re incapable of empathy, or you’re incapable of empathy.” “.
Dan responded, sounding a bit defensive and annoyed: “It was an alumni club meeting, I’m an officer, and the congressman was the guest speaker. I felt a responsibility to be there. The journey to the funeral for us and the children, on short notice.”
“Big deal,” Jill replied, “how about just consoling me?” I’d been crying all day, and you could have at least helped with the kids, given the state I was in. My friends have been more supportive than you.”
Dan replied, his voice rising, “Well, actually, you weren’t supportive of me at all when my daughter was having that big crisis with her mom, and I had to step in to help sort things out. I was dealing with a lot of stress and didn’t know what to do. But you were.” So cold and I just said, “That’s your problem. He is your ex and your daughter. Go deal with it.”
Related: 5 Science-Backed Reasons People Get Divorced
Both Jill and Dan went on to describe feelings of loss and disappointment over not receiving more emotional support from the other, over issues big and small. They said it only got worse over the years of their marriage.
They’re starting to wonder if she’s headed to the cemetery. Of course, there are likely many issues in their relationship that haven’t surfaced yet, but this issue – the desire for support – is something they both focus very heavily on. They say they want more support for their needs, both verbally and in practice.
Find mutualism
Being open to receiving support is crucial to a caring, bonding relationship. Research has found that being open to emotional and social support is associated with better health overall. Neither Jill nor Dan are unresponsive or reluctant to receive them, they strongly suggest.
But that’s only half of what’s needed for both positive relationships and physical health. The other half is being able to provide direct support to the other person, not just willingly receive it. This is different from telling each other what they don’t get from each other. It is reciprocal.
In fact, some new empirical research confirms what we see clinically: mutual support, reciprocity about differences and decision-making are essential to a healthy relationship. For example, a new study out of Ohio looked at the impact of supporting each other in times of need, and how different forms of support affect overall health, which is an interesting connection. The study recognized that receiving social support from others is known to be the key to health. But the researchers investigated whether providing support might also play an important role in health.
Yes it is. They find that willingness to provide social support — to your spouse, friends and family — may be more important than simply receiving it.
The researchers found that on one important measure of public health—chronic inflammation—indices of positive social relationships were associated with decreased inflammation only among people who said they were available to provide social support to family and friends, not just to receive it.
“Positive relationships may be associated with reduced inflammation only for those who believe they can provide more support in those relationships,” said lead author Tao Jiang.
This means that having friends you can count on may only benefit your health if you are also available to help them when they need it. Researchers have found such relationships to be particularly rewarding and stress-relieving. This is consistent with clinical evidence that positive couples’ relationships are characterized by mutual support.
This study was based on 1,054 healthy adults between the ages of 34 and 84 and was published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity.
Related: 5 Situations When Divorce Is The Best Parenting Decision You Can Make
How to learn to give support – not just receive it
Another study attempted to look at this from a different angle than the Ohio State research. An academic study from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany, whose findings may be limited by its view of the issue, to begin with.
The researchers focused on how people “understand” each other. They examined how people determine what another person thinks, feels, or wants. They related how that, in turn, enables people to engage in successful and mutually rewarding relationships.
Published in the journal Erkenntnis, the study described what they called “strategies” that people use to understand each other. She stated that people detect other people’s mental states based on their behavior, or through “mind reading” from what they notice the other person is doing.
Researchers believe that such reasoning is central to social cognition, and therefore central to understanding others. And this, one would think, is crucial to know how to provide the support the other person needs.
In my view, this study may be flawed due to its focus on the cognitive “strategies” that enable people to understand each other and build positive, supportive relationships with one another. They acknowledge that people combine several strategies for understanding others.
But the problem is that mutuality—necessary for healthy intimate relationships, or even functional relationships, say in the work environment—isn’t just a cognitive “strategy.” The latter is useful for charting a direction with a project or goal. Rather, mutuality grows out of a combination of mental and emotional awareness, of both the self and the other person; And realizing the impact of each other on the other.
Here’s what that looks like and how to grow it:
Four Parts Of Positive Relationship Connection
The first two concern your own and the other’s interior life and how it impacts the relationship:
1. Work to expand awareness of your own feelings, desires, and goals — immediate and longer-term — within that relationship. It may require outside help or meditative practice.
2. Expand your awareness into and within the other’s feelings, desires, and goals — immediate and longer-term — within your relationship. Step outside of yourself and tune into that person’s interior world, as best as you can discern it. That may also require help and guidance to “see” a situation from how the other person experiences it.
Related: 3 Practices to Deepen Love and Connection
The other two parts relate to your influence on each other:
- Notice and acknowledge the impact you are having on the other. It may be verbal or non-verbal; Or even by physical presence and appearance. In a work environment, it may be role related. Listen to what you see in their reaction. Be open to the question.
- Notice and accept the other person’s influence on you. Similarly, it may be verbal or non-verbal feelings, aspects of that person’s physical presence, or feelings that elicit an emotional response or attitude. And he may not be attached to that person, per se, but with an association, you just don’t realize it enough.
