How to Drop the Drama and Master the Art of Loving Simply in Seven Easy Steps
by Rachel G. Baldino, MSW, LCSW for www.SixWise.com

The seven steps outlined below can help you learn how to eliminate destructive, unnecessary emotional drama from your relationships -- not only with your significant other, but with all of your friends and loved ones.

Fortunately, we all have what it takes to make our relationships-and our emotional lives in general-considerably less tense and dramatic, and much more calm, peaceful, loving and satisfying.

About the Author SixWise.com contributing editor Rachel G. Baldino, MSW, LCSW, is the author of the e-book, Loving Simply: Eliminating Drama from Your Intimate Relationships, published in 2006 by Fictionwise.com, and the print book, Welcome to Methadonia: A Social Worker's Candid Account of Life in a Methadone Clinic, published in 2000 by White Hat Communications. Her articles have appeared in Social Work Today, The New Social Worker, New Living Magazine, Conflict911.com and other publications. After earning her MSW from the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work in1997, she provided counseling services, first at a methadone clinic, and later at an outpatient mental health treatment facility. Ms. Baldino has been quoted about managing anger in relationships in Kathy Svitil's 2006 book, Calming The Anger Storm, which is part of the Psychology Today Here To Help series. She has also been quoted in such magazines, newspapers and online publications as For Me Magazine, Conceive Magazine, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Albany Times Union, The Tallahassee Democrat, Bay State Parent Magazine, TheBridalBook.com, Babyzone.com, Momstoday.com, The Newhouse News Service, and Indianapolis Woman. She lives with her husband and children in Massachusetts.

In his renowned book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert, John Gottman reports that happily married couples have what he defines as "emotional intelligence," in the sense that, "In their day-to-day lives, they have hit upon a dynamic that keeps their negative thoughts and feelings about each other (which all couples have) from overwhelming their positive ones."

Over the years, in his "Seattle Love Lab," he has become so adept at observing the nuanced patterns and rhythms of marital dynamics, that he is not exaggerating when he reports that he can "predict whether a couple will divorce after watching and listening to them for just five minutes." More precisely, he can actually use his well-honed observational skills to predict whether a couple will stay together or split with a 91% accuracy rate.

Keeping Gottman's empirical findings in mind, below are seven concrete, practical strategies that you can use to improve the quality of communication in your intimate relationship:

1. Work toward mastering the art of "Loving Simply" by significantly reducing the level of negativity in your emotional landscape. To accomplish this goal, simply focus your attention and energy on all of the best qualities in yourself, your significant other, and all of your other loved ones as well.

   This is a critical first step toward dropping the drama, because if you spend too much time dwelling on your partner's faults-rather than on his or her strengths-you might just lose sight of why you fell in love in the first place.

   When you make a conscious effort to develop and maintain a strong, loving bond of profound connectedness and intimacy with your partner-one that is filled with mutual kindness, tenderness, and trust-what you are actually creating is a continual, ever-strengthening loop of positive feedback between the two of you, and that can only benefit your relationship in both the short and long term.

2. Make up your mind to live your life according to The Golden Rule, (treat others as you wish to be treated), and stick to it. This powerful tenet for positive, constructive living and loving should be the one totally unbreakable thread that runs through all of your interactions with your partner (and with all of your loved ones), especially when you feel angry.

   After all, everyone feels irritated-and even downright furious-from time to time, and it is when we are at our angriest that we tend to say the most hurtful things, so that is precisely when we need to check our behavior, rein in our worst impulses, and make a point of resolving our conflicts with those we love in the least hurtful way possible.

   And of course, it's the little things we do in our relationships that matter the most.

"Couples who incorporate "The Golden Rule" into their lives experience more satisfaction in their relationships."

3. There is never a need for "manufactured drama" in loving relationships. "Manufactured" or "self-created" drama includes mind games, temper tantrums, screaming matches, rages, and other negative behaviors that tend to occur with alarming frequency in the vast majority of unhealthy, non-nurturing relationships.

   The older we get, the more we come to realize that real life provides us with more than enough genuine dramas and actual crises (in the form of illnesses, the deaths of loved ones, job losses, financial struggles, etc.). Of course, this means that there is absolutely no need for us to add any needless, manufactured melodrama into the mix.

4. Craving manufactured drama can be a form of emotional addiction. People who yearn for excessive conflict and arguing with their partners and others may want to take a long, hard look at exactly why this is the case.

   Are they attempting to use emotional melodrama to fill an emotional void of some kind?

   Some people who feel bored, emotionally numb, lonely, or unfulfilled in some way tend to pick fights with those they love in an attempt to escape their sense of emotional numbness or emptiness, but filling an emotional void with this kind of negativity is never the answer.

5. With dedication and effort, "drama addiction" can actually be conquered. Think of a craving for emotional melodrama as a bad habit, a habit that can actually be kicked! Once people recognize that they have a problem with craving and creating needless drama in their relationships, and then make the decision to change, they need to develop some self-regulating skills.

   For instance, if they notice that they are starting a lot of needless arguments with their spouse and/or their children, they must make the deliberate choice to curb their hurtful, destructive behavior. And if they remain vigilant about observing and working to change their negative relational behaviors for the better, then over time they will notice a significant decrease in the level of drama in their relationships.

6. Always make an effort to use constructive, kindly worded communication in your relationships, even when you are irritated. It's an indisputable fact that kindness always fosters greater intimacy and trust in relationships.

   After all, there is never a need for a minor argument to escalate into a major battle. Indeed, there may be nothing quite as gratifying in this life as gaining (and maintaining) full control of one's own behavior. Deep breathing can be an effective anger-diffusing technique.

"According to John Gottman, couples with similar levels of emotional intelligence are most likely to stay together."

7. As complicated as we human beings are, the way we love each other can be extraordinarily simple. In other words, the ways in which we give and receive love need not be painful, tense, complicated, or fraught with melodrama of any kind. In fact, the way we treat our partners and our other loved ones can (and should) be kind, honest and-perhaps most important of all-free of any manipulation, nasty drama, or game-playing.

People often fall back on the cliché that "love and marriage require a lot of hard work in order to be successful," but in fact everything depends on how you define the phrase "hard work."

If you think it is "hard work" to consistently behave in a kind, nurturing manner with your partner, and your other loved ones, then perhaps "hard work" is precisely what's required. However, if these nurturing behaviors come naturally to you-or if you have already made the choice to develop and refine your nurturing skills-then maintaining the high quality of your relationships may not feel like "hard work" at all.

The good news is that even if behaving more constructively in your relationships initially feels like "hard work," after you have finished training yourself to "drop the drama," argue less hurtfully, and live your life according to The Golden Rule, your consistent efforts will start to pay off in the most wonderful ways.

Best of all, your new, more positive relational behaviors will eventually begin to feel less like "hard work," and more like "second nature."

Recommended Reading:

How do You Know You are Really in Love with Someone? PLEASE Tell Us Your Thoughts on This!

The 9 Types of Romanic Love: Which Type Do You Believe In?

Sources

Baldino, Rachel G. Loving Simply: Eliminating Drama from Your Intimate Relationships. Fictionwise.com, 2006

Gottman, John. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert. New York: Crown, 1999.