Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
So I'm kind of in the season right now where I have had a lot of opportunity to
do marriage preparation with couples and a lot of opportunity to actually witness their, their weddings
and which is just a phenomenal, phenomenal experience.
One of the things that I've noticed though is that this theme keeps running back in my mind.
every time I'm talking with these couples and it's the theme of like,
How do you achieve a certain kind of mastery when it comes to relationships?
And this doesn't have to do just simply with romantic relationships but any kind of relationship.
How do you achieve a certain kind of mastery?
That term, to be a master in the relationship versus a disaster in the relationship
comes from a guy named Dr. John Gottman. He's a ... I don't know, some kind of doctor
and so he brought in these couples—this was years ago—he brought in these couples
and he had them have a conversation with each other and he filmed it, recorded it,
but he also hooked them up to a blood pressure monitor, onto a heart rate monitor
and something that measured their level of perspiration on their skin
and he asked them to have a conversation about a shared memory that they had with each other.
And so he monitored the heart rate, blood pressure, and the perspiration
as they had this conversation, he noticed something that was remarkable,
that there were some couples that even if there was having a conversation about a happy shared memory,
their heart rate was elevated, their blood pressure was up, and they were sweating.
They were actually ... the body had gone into, when they had this conversation with each other,
their body had gone into the fight-or-flight mode
whereas other couples doing the same thing, talking about a shared memory,
that even if they had a disagreement, in the midst of that conversation,
they had some kind of fight in the midst of that conversation,
that their heart rate remained constant, their blood pressure was normal and they didn't start sweating.
They didn't go into fight or flight mode, but they were at peace, they were at calm.
He followed up with these couples six years later and he found something remarkable,
that those couples whose ... who went into the fight-or-flight mode in a normal conversation,
that their relationship had either completely exploded
or they were still together and it had just crumbled and imploded,
whereas the other couples, those who were even able to have a hard conversation with their spouse—
this was between spouses—
that years later, they seemed to be masters, they seemed to be doing great
when it came to their relationship with each other.
And one of the things that he recognizedbwas this, was that what was missing
in those couples who were disasters was the exact thing that those couples were masters had
and that one thing was trust.
Now you might find yourself in a situation, regardless of whether it's a romantic relationship
or a relationship between family members or or good friends where you're like, "Man, we're kind of disasters,"
because we all have those friends, right, that, that you kind of are always on alert
when you're having a conversation with them because you know that if you say the wrong thing,
man, they're gonna jump down your throat faster than you can say, "I'm sorry. I said the wrong thing,"
because they're always looking for that, you know, that that place to dig, so you don't have any trust,
so you're on alert.
How do you ... how do you regain trust?
Well, there's another doctor who did a study in 2006 where she again, same kind of thing,
monitored these couples and kind of just watched how they interacted with each other on a regular basis.
She watched them over the course of a day and one of the things she noticed was that
trust was not built in one moment but trust was built or destroyed over a series of moments
and those moments are completely benign because we think sometimes,
"To have a happy relationship, a holy relationship, a healthy relationship,
you've got to have like heroic love and heroic patience and heroic forgiveness,"
and this other doctor said, Actually, it's not that complicated. It's much more simple than that
and it's not heroic, it's incredibly commonplace. Here's what she noticed.
Um, so the wife comes home and she walks in the door, and the husband's reading the newspaper,
something like this: watching TV, playing a video game.
She says, "The woman at the bank was so mean to me today."
Now, the husband has one of four possible responses.
He can have this active destructive kind of response, where he can look up and say,
"Well, you must've done something wrong because people aren't just mean for no good reason."
That's active destructive or destructive active.
He could also have a destructive passive, which is completely ignoring it.
She comes in, "The woman at the bank was incredibly rude to me today,"
and he's like, "Oh, you know, it's gonna rain tonight I think," just completely ignores it.
So there's, you know, passive destructive kind of comment.
Now, he also could have a passive constructive type comment where he's reading the newspaper,
um, passive constructive, she says, "Someone was so mean to me at the bank today,"
and he's just like, "Wow, that stinks," and moves on.
Passive constructive ... there's not, no, no. Connection it doesn't happen in any one of those
because either it's ignored or I'm accusing you of something
or I'm just kind of like, "Oh, interesting," then go back to my thing.
There's a fourth way and that fourth way is active constructive or constructive active.
One of the ... one of the two.
Where she says, "Someone was incredibly mean to me at the bank today," and he puts down his newspaper
and says, "Oh my gosh. Uh, what happened? Tell me about it."
He basically gives her his attention.
What they found, this doctor found,
she found that couples that only responded with the passive constructive response thirty percent of the time
were disasters, disasters.
But those couples who were masters and nine out of ten, almost ninety percent of the time,
they responded with the positive constructive or constructive positive responsive
of just "I'm acknowledging what you said, putting my paper down, looking you in the eyeballs,"
in fact, that was a couple that I ... it's a great couple that I did marriage prep with.
They had discovered this, discovered this on their own.
She had come to over to his house at one point, he's playing video games.
He's a computer programmer, kind of guy and she was telling him all about her day
and he's like, "Uh-huh, uh-huh," he's listening to her and he's like,
"I'm totally listening to her and I'm doing my computer game,"
and at one point, he gets up and goes into the kitchen, and she stops talking and he says,
"Wait, no. Keep talking to me." She's like, "Why? You're not even listening."
And they had this big, big fight and the conclusion of the fight, they realized, they came to the agreement,
They said, "OK, when I come over to your house, the first fifteen minutes I just need eyeball time.
I just need eyeball time from you.
Just put whatever it is you're doing down as soon as you can
and just look me in the eye so I know you're paying attention to me.
That's active constructive and what is that?
That's not heroic. It's not heroic love, that's not heroic forgiveness, not, not heroic patience.
It's just everyday kindness.
The real simple word is they were polite.
They were polite.
Some of the last people that we're polite with are the ones we live with,
are the ones were called to love the most.
I think one of the reasons why is because
I want to go the heroic route but God's calling me to just do the humble thing,
which is, OK, be kind to the people you live with, be kind to the people you live next to,
be kind to the person who's trying to make an active connection and just watch the trust grow,
watch the relationship bloom and become a master when it comes to relationships.
Even St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians chapter 4, says
Be kind to one another, mutually forgiving but be kind to one another.
It goes so far.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, hopefully that's good news,
this is Father Mike.
God bless.