John Gottman: How to Build Trust

[Music] but how do you build trust again you can turn to research because research is going to tell you specifically what it is that increases this trust metric and what it is eventually that helps us understand the dynamics of betrayal okay turns out that trust is built in very small moments which i call sliding door moments after the movie sliding doors because in any interaction there's a possibility of connection with our partner or turning away from our partner let me give an example of that from my own relationship so one night i was really wanting to finish a mystery novel i i thought i knew who the killer was but i wanted to really find out so i put the novel on my bedside and i walked in to the bathroom and before i even got into the bathroom i looked at my wife's face in the mirror and she looked sad she was brushing her hair so it was a sliding door moment i had a choice i could kind of sneak out of the bathroom and think you know i don't want to deal with her sadness tonight i want to read my novel i don't now that really wouldn't define our relationship any you know but because i'm a sensitive researcher of relationships i decided to go into the bathroom i took the brush from her hair and i said what's the matter baby she told me why she was sad now that moment i was building trust i was there for her right i was connecting with her rather than choosing to think only about what i wanted these are the moments that we've discovered that build trust now one such moment is not that important but if you're always choosing to turn away then trust erodes in the relationship very gradually very slowly and the next slide you can see this idea of attunement is really the mechanism that my graduate student dan yoshimoto discovered is the basis for building trust and a two-minute stands for this acronym of awareness of the other person's emotion turning toward the emotion tolerance of two different viewpoints going for understanding the partner responding non-defensively and responding with empathy the discovery in the research is that betrayal and distrust are not related to each other very strongly in other words betrayal is not the same as distrust and we usually think of it as related but the atom of betrayal is not just turning away not just turning away from my wife's sadness in that moment but doing what carol rusbalt called a cl alt and you can see that on the third line and what that means is i not only turn away from her sadness but i think to myself i can do better who needs this crap i'm always dealing with her negativity i can do better carol rusbalt spent three decades studying this variable cl alt because once you start it stands for comparison level for alternatives and once you start thinking that you can do better then you begin a cascade of not committing to the relationship of trashing your partner instead of cherishing your partner of building resentment rather than gratitude of lower investment in the relationship less dependency for getting your needs met not sacrificing for the relationship and escalating conflict so it becomes an absorbing state [Music] you

Channel: Greater Good Science Center

Views: 548,531

Keywords: john gottman, trust, relationships

Id: rgWnadSi91s

Length: 4min 42sec (282 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 28 2011