How can you tell a good relationship from a bad one? One way is to see whether the relationship partners influence each other and allow themselves to be influenced.
My idea for this article came when I recently got together with an acquaintance at a restaurant. For some reason, I didn’t feel good about the time I spent with this person but I could not identify why I felt this way. After all, we had greeted each other warmly. She smiled as she spoke to me while we enjoyed our meals and we exchanged pleasant goodbyes at the end.
Sometime after I left her, it hit me in one of those ‘Eureka’ moments why I had not enjoyed my time with this person: Very little that I said had an impact on her as most of the conversation involved her talking about various aspects of her life. Although I asked her several questions about her life and her opinions on various issues, she displayed in return little interest in my life or my opinions. In short, neither I nor my opinions mattered to this person. In the words of relationship expert John Gottman, I had no influence on her. This realization reinforced in my mind the importance of what Gottman calls ‘accepting influence’ in a relationship.
What does ‘accepting influence’ mean and how does it affect a relationship?
When partners accept influence from each other, it means that each partner allows the other to have an effect on them. This may entail seeking out your partner for their advice or opinions, relying on them for help in certain areas of life, working with them to come to decisions which affect either or both of you, and responding to them when they make what Gottman calls ‘bids for connection.’ Examples of such bids include making a thoughtful comment, a joke or a nonverbal gesture of affection. The essence of why accepting influence matters so much to a relationship is that when it is happening, each partner feels “I must matter to him/her because I’m having an effect on him/her.” Interestingly, Gottman’s research finds that (a) men accepting influence from their female partners is especially predictive of a good relationship and (b) men are less likely to accept influence from their partners compared with women.
How to improve your relationships by targetting the accepting influence variable
If your relationship with your partner is not in a good state, it may be worth checking on the state of the accepting influence variable. Could you do more to accept influence from your partner? If so, making efforts to do so could have a significant positive effect on your relationship. Could your partner do more to accept influence from you? If so, raising the issue with them could lead to their making positive changes which also could lead to improvements in your relationship. It may be helpful to address these issues by working on them in couples counselling.
How to improve your mood by spending more time with people who accept influence from you
If your overall mood is not in a good place, it may be helpful to do an ‘inventory’ of your social interactions to identify how much time you spend with people who do or do not tend to accept influence from you. If your investigation determines that you are spending too much time with people who do not tend to accept influence from you, this would suggest you should decrease the amount of time you spend with such people in favour of time you instead spend with people who do accept influence from you. Making these changes could lead to a significant improvement in your mood. I have seen this positive result occur with clients in depression counselling in my work as a Calgary psychologist and a Cochrane psychologist.
May your relationships be those in which influence is accepted on both sides,
-Dr. Pat
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