South Asian relationships, as well as all other relationships, have the difficult task of learning how to balance positive sentiments versus negative sentiments in their interactions.
Positive sentiments include showing affection, explaining your complaints in a soft, clear and fair manner, accepting influence, successfully repairing an argument, being empathic, etc. On the flip side, negative sentiments include anger, hostility, contempt, criticism, etc. In healthy relationships, Gottman has found that for healthy couples during conflict, the ratio of positive to negative interactions is 5:1! This means in healthy relationships there are 5 times as many positive interactions in healthy relationships as there are negative interactions. Essentially, in healthy relationships, if you hurt your partner’s feelings or you make a critical comment, it takes about 5 positive interactions to make up for that 1 negative comment because the negative interactions have such a strong influence on damaging the relationship.
Couples who were headed for divorce, or headed toward a lifetime of dissatisfaction and being more like roommates as is more often seen in South Asian couples, the ratio became 0.8 positive interactions to 1 negative interaction! There tends to be more negative comments than positive ones which does not leave much opportunity to make up for the negative interactions since the positive ones are much more rare than in healthy couples.
This perpetual interactional style influences how couples view their relationship. Through what Gottman calls Positive Sentiment Override (PSO), healthy couples are able to give each other the benefit of the doubt during potential conflict, accept repair attempts, and are able to laugh about issues that seem to be persistent problems. Basically, the couple has a more positive outlook of the relationship and is more likely to think that a questionable comment from their partner was more likely a mistake or not meant to sound as negative as it might have sounded.
Unhealthy couples, instead, have a Negative Sentiment Override (NSO), which is characterized by behaving and reacting as if their significant other is their enemy rather than their partner. Ambiguous or neutral comments are taken more as attacks or criticisms and repair attempts are often not accepted.
Interestingly, if you find yourself experiencing NSO, the most helpful thing South Asian couples can do for themselves is to focus on building PSO. This is even more helpful than working hard at the relationship to identify why negative feelings existed within the couple to begin with. Of course, those conversations do need to be had; however without more positive sentiment than negative, one or both partners will become resentful and exhausted from the constant work without any positivity to balance it out with..
This requires a significant shift in thinking but if the effort is given more towards building positive sentiments, rather than removing negative sentiments, the PSO will automatically start to have more of an effect than the NSO and you will see a positive shift in how you relate to each other.
By doing this, you will begin to build up the “emotional savings account” so that when you do have to work hard at the relationship (e.g. have those talks about why so much negativity became a part of your relationship or expressing a complaint with your partner) there are positive sentiments already in the bank to help you get through the difficult times.
Need help getting started on how to build up positive sentiments? See our list of 50 new activities to do with your partner, choose one or two, and commit yourselves to just enjoying each other’s company during the activities.
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