Are you on the path of betrayal?

According to Gottman’s research, couples either systematically build commitment and loyalty, or they systematically build the basis for eventual betrayal.

Think about this in terms of sex. Are you going for your own pleasure Are you excited by your partner’s erotic pleasure? This is much more likely if you are committed couple.

If you are on the other path, you may be thinking, “I could do better. There is some real or imagined relationship out there in which I could do better, be happier. I invest less in the relationship and sacrifice less. I work to get the best deal for myself in negotiating any conflict.”

When that happens, “I avoid self-disclosure and start avoiding conflict…start keeping secrets. They don’t deserve it and I do not benefit from telling them. I start thinking what is in it for me? Then quite frankly, why should I do anything? They don’t do anything for me.”

It is a slow process and you can see how it happens. I begin to vilify and trash partner in my mind, then to a confidant. People talk about the friend at work or at a church that is giving them support as they go through a painful divorce. It is okay to get that support and that is why I recommend doing that with a trained professional, do not trash your relationship to someone of the opposite sex who is equally vulnerable. Bad things happen.

I get so excited by these principles, I just have to share. Gottman has so much to say that really is at the core of human relationships!

Principle seven- negative comps begin the cascade toward betrayal.

“Negative comps (comparing someone with whom you are in relationship to other people and your partner comes up lacking) are most important when one partner experiences negative emotion or pain and reaches out to their partner, wants to connect and is turned away. The other partner (the one who turned away from partner 1) may think to self, “Who needs this demand, this negativity? I can do better than this.” This starts the 24 steps in the cascade that lead to eventual betrayal,” according to Gottman in the New Science of Love.

 VERY IMPORTANT not only in business but also in relationships- "I am looking out for us" or just for me and "you are on your own" . Each message is very impactful. If you are in it for yourself, I can definitely do better.

What if you are better off without them? What if it makes no sense whatsoever to be with this person, and is harmful to you? When seeing what your options are, you make a better choice.

Have you ever had a friend that you had to drop because they were not good for you, or you outgrew them or they changed?

What if you constantly are being betrayed by someone like this?

What if you are right and the other person should not be doing what they are doing and you ask and they keep doing it? Many couples in my practice describe this one in detail. They would prefer to stay married to their current partner, if their partner would stop doing things that were deal breakers. Otherwise, they feel forced to leave.

If I can get a better deal, then why would I continue investing in this relationship? That is true whether we are talking spouses, friends or business associates.

“Why would I commit to you when I don’t get my needs met well enough? "This type of thinking predicts sexual infidelity- they don’t “just happen” It is an orderly and glacial cascade toward betrayal, instead of toward loyalty and commitment. Affairs happen if unmet needs. Their occurrence is entirely predictable," as Caryl Rusbult demonstrated.

Building Commitment and Loyalty

This is phase three of building relationships- John Gottman, PhD

Yes you can apply these concepts to business, as well as couples and family/friends.

“There is a third phase of love, which comes after building trust-building true commitment and loyalty. Does the couple cherish one another and nurture gratitude for what they have or do they nurture resentment for what they think is missing. Do they make a deeper love last a lifetime or do they nurture betrayal? Erosion of trust is not the same thing as betrayal. It is a different metric.”

A zero sum game has a win/loss mentality. One person comes out as the winner and the other is the loser. Who wants to be the loser in a romantic relationship, or in business for that matter? If you are looking at situations in your relationship and trying to win, having the other person lose, instead of looking for ways to benefit both of you- you are sowing the seeds for betrayal. If your gain has to be from my loss, it is a zero sum game. Remember the Nash Equilibrium? He argued for the maximizing of payout for all involved.

Look at politics today and  business they seem to favor a situation in which there is a winner or loser. Why do we feel so betrayed by our businesses and politicians? It is because they seem to have made it so that one person wins and another loses- and perhaps rigged the system in so doing. We recognize that there are some situations where this is natural and yet we are pitting people against one another. Healthy, fair competition has its place pitting people against one another does not.

Repeatedly, in counseling sessions, I hear one partner say, "I am not always wrong, you know." or "How come I always have to lose?" Remember, if you want to be away from the betrayal metric, you go for a situation in which everyone wins!

While it feels better to do this, remember that there are deeper implications of being selfish and going only for your own good-

“Husbands in zero-sum kinds of relationships died much earlier than husbands where there was cooperation- true even controlling statistically for husband age and health… faster baseline myocardial contractility, and chronically higher blood pressure- the betrayal metric has life threatening consequences!” Gottman reminds us.