In his best-seller Faster: The acceleration of just about everything, James Gleick confronts us with society's obsession to compress more and more into less and less time. Here's one quote: It is possible, after all, to tie shoes and watch television, to eat and read, to shave and talk with the children. These days it is possible to drive, eat, listen to a book, and talk on the phone, all at once, if you dare. No segment of time-not a day, not a second-can really be a zero-sum game. “Attention! Multitaskers,” says an advertisement for an AT&T wireless telephone service. “Demo all these exciting features”-namely E-mail, voice telephone, and pocket organizer. Pay attention if you can. We have always multitasked-inability to walk and chew gum is a time-honored cause for derision-but never so intensely or so self-consciously as now. If haste is the gas pedal, multitasking is overdrive. We are multitasking connoisseurs-experts in crowding, pressing, packing, and overlapping distinct activities in our all-too-finite moments. I think we all get the sense that life is getting faster every day, too fast for comfort. And this clearly is affecting our personal relationships. Life's frenetic pace seems to leave us with precious few hours during which we can attend to and enjoy unhurried communion with our mates.

And that presents a real problem. While some hold that the “quality” of time can somehow compensate for lack of “quantity,” one marriage expert, Dr. Willard Harley, relates his very different conclusion based on years of working with couples in distress: If a couple is deeply in love with each other and find that their marital needs are being met, I have found that about fifteen hours each week of undivided attention is usually enough to sustain their love. Without fifteen hours of undivided attention each week, a couple simply can't do what it takes to sustain their feeling of love for each other. Interestingly, one of the most common reactions to demonstrations of the Relationship Enhancement approach is that discussions take longer than usual. Whenever your partner says something, you have to give a complete empathic response. Why can't it go faster?

One reason is that, as Dr. Harley observes, it just takes time for people to build and maintain a close, loving relationship. The kind of empathic, warm, honest, and open communications that couples learn in the Relationship Enhancement approach supports this bonding, and attempts to rush or shortcut the process only diminish the benefits.

Remember that spoken words are just the “tip of the iceberg.” Words come from the lips only after the mind has processed a myriad of thoughts and feelings. So when we pause to empathically savor the underlying complexity of what our mate has said, when we “stop and smell the roses,” and when, as a result, our mate feels understood and valued, then our relationship has become a little stronger.

Tags: Relationships

About the Author

www.empathic.homestead.com
James Lucoff is Director of Empathic Coaching Associates and is an authorized Relationship Enhancement educator. Relationship Enhancement has been cited by researchers as one of the most effective relationship skills programs. Empathic Coaching Associates teaches individuals and couples internationally via telephone and video conferencing in private sessions. Visit their web site at http://empathic.homestead.com.