What’s the one skill that will benefit couples the most right now? That is, what’s most important to helping you and your partner feel happier, more resilient, less resentful, and better able to endure the many stresses of marriage and raising kids? The answer, according to Dr. John Gottman, is simple: listening. That is, you must know how to listen to your partner with empathy, interest, and, importantly, without offering solutions. Whether your relationship is strong or struggling, he says mastering this communication skill is critical to success. Time to brush up.
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Two Bad Habits That Breed Resentment in Marriage
1. Holding Back Affection
It’s easy to let intimacy slide in a marriage. Both of you are often bogged down in the day-to-day responsibilities of work and family. But holding back physical contact, even small gestures like hand holding or light touches, can start to sow seeds of doubt. In the absence of physical connection, a spouse may question whether or not their partner is still attracted to them or interested in them at all. “Although a lack of sexual intimacy can be a red flag,” says Denna Babul, a relationship expert and the author of Love Strong, “intimacy can be felt in other ways like a goodnight kiss or a wink from across the room to let the other person know they are still seen and desired.” Paying attention to such small gestures is crucial.
2. Not Having Your Spouse’s Back
If you often take a family member’s or friend’s side in an argument over your partner’s, look out. Your spouse will eventually feel like you don’t value their opinions or that you don’t care enough about them to support them in public. This sends a clear message. It’s important to keep in mind that you’re a team and you need to present yourselves that way. “Take the differing opinions behind closed doors,” Babul says, “settle the score, and come back united as a team to ensure a wedge of resentment does not start to form.”
For some more bad habits to be aware of, read the rest of the story here.
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The practice has been popping up on birth plans everywhere, and science is on its side.
3 Soothing Techniques to Calm a Fussy Baby
1. Stand Up
Babies like to stand. Science says so. In studies, infants under six months who were carried immediately stopped voluntary movement and crying and exhibited a rapid heart rate decrease due to an inborn calming response that, researchers speculate, probably helped survival in cases of emergency escape where the mother held a quiet child. So, if you’re sitting down with a fussy baby, pick them up. It’s that simple.
2. Shush Them
Babies in the womb experience a constant noise that is near 90 db (think, a motorcycle 25 feet away). It must be jarring then, for them to come into the silence of our lives. If baby gets fussy, get right up to their ear and shush (“shh shh shh”) like a white noise machine. To note: This technique is one of the hallowed 5 S’s that pediatrician Harvey Karp proposes to calm a fussy baby.
3. Swaddle Them
This is as simple as it sounds. Babies have a reflex in which they feel like they’re falling (yes, the moro reflex is as spectacularly weird as it sounds) and so their limbs flail and they can wake themselves. So get your swaddling technique down and you will have a baby that’s all that much calmer.
Here are a few more ways to calm a fussy baby.
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