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With it being Valentine’s Day we are taking the opportunity to write a post about: How to build and keep an emotionally healthy and optimistic relationship.

Examine your relationship for the existence of these five fallacies.  Each fallacy involves some degree of distorted thinking, assumption making without evidence, and leads to negative thinking and feelings.

Before you let negative thoughts and feelings about yourself, the other and your relationship go on for too long – STOP -examine the relationship situation for one of the fallacies, and make corrections before playing the hopeless, helpless, “woe is me” blame game.

Rid Your Relationship of these Five Fallacies

1) Control Fallacy

You see yourself as responsible for your partners needs, feelings and happiness, and therefore you are a failure if problems arise in any of these areas.  Alternatively, you believe your partner should be in control of meeting all or most of your needs, feelings, and happiness in which case if there is a perceived problem your partner is to blame. 

Sometimes these control fallacies can apply to a broad set of needs, but other times they might occur in a moment or around a particular issue.  For example, on Valentine’s Day my partner is supposed to surprise me and treat me like a “king” or “queen.” 

Such control beliefs are a set-up for disappointment and perceived failure in the relationship leading to discouragement and feelings of inadequacy.  Relationships work better and are more healthy when the partners believe that they, themselves, are responsible for meeting their own needs.  Relationship partners can do this best by collaborating, communicating and helping each other meet each other’s joint needs.

• For example, if Valentine’s Day is important to a couple, discuss your mutual needs and desires and jointly create a plan to meet them.

2) Assumed Intent Fallacy

You engage in mind reading; the tendency to make assumptions about the feelings and motives of your partner.  Such unconfirmed beliefs about intent can lead to anger, hurt and discouragement. 

Examples include: 

• She must not have liked the tickets I got because she said how neat it would be to be in a “box seat” at the Opera.

• He must be mad at me because he has not returned my call.

• He must not want a child because he didn’t jump for joy when I told him I was pregnant.

Best not to make assumptions of motive or intent, but if you do, check it out with a communication skill called the“perception check.”  Here is an example  related to the first item above:

His “perception check:” “I’d like to sit in a Box Seat too some day, but I hope you liked the seats we had tonight.“  Her Response: “Oh yes, I was just ‘pipe dreaming’.”

3) Fallacy of Letting it all Out

Different cultures and sub-cultures have different assumptions about the expression of strong negative emotions towards others along a continuum of control (hold it in) versus release (let it all out).

Sometime during the last half of the 20th century the “express your feelings” movement incorporated the misguided notion that such expression should include the wanton expression of verbal, negative emotion.  “Unload, let the other person have it right between then eyes.” 

In point of fact, such unloading of negative affect is really driven by the unhelpful assumption that my pain is someone else’s fault and therefore I must inflict pain with my anger and expression of emotional violence.

Sharing emotional pain with the other in a verbally aggressive and violent manner inflicts hurt upon the other and is damaging to the relationship.  If one wants to “let it all out,” try screaming into a pillow, go into the woods and scream at the “tree Gods,” or call up a good friend and just emote. 

In a relationship, “hurt” is the soft underbelly of anger.  Better to talk about your “hurt” than your anger. 

• For example saying:  “I felt ‘left out’ and ‘ignored’ when you talked to everyone else at the party but me,” is much more likely to get her focused on your need and result in constructive problem solving than saying: “You don’t have any regard for me at all. You just think about yourself and ignore me all together.  You are a . . . “

4) The Magnification Fallacy

Use of the “emotionally magnifying” words like all, every, always, none, nobody and everyone instead of some, many, most of the time, rarely, and a few sets the relationship up for feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.  Words like “some” and “rarely” allow for the mental attitude that improvements in the relationship can be made; leave room for at least a little hope.

Use of emotionally intensifying words like terrible, awful, disgusting, horrendous and unbelievable can increase the negative intensity in a relationship by a factor of 10 to 100 or more.  Try using these intensity minimizing words and phrases instead: not to good, upsetting, quite painful, somewhat hard to believe. By minimizing the intensity, you allow for the possibility that logic could prevail and a rational, problem solving discussion could take place.

5) Fractured Logic Fallacy

This fallacy takes the form of:  “because . . . therefore it means.”  It is another fallacy that involves unchecked assumptions.  Here is an example:

• Because we came home early from our “night out” from the kids, it means our relationship has lost the luster it once had.

The “fractured logic fallacy” is best countered with the “alternative explanation” approach.  Before jumping to such conclusions brainstorm alternative possible reasons such as:

• Our relationship has matured and deepened.  We enjoy being home.  We came home early so we can watch the kids while they sleep for a moment, and then go and enjoy time with each other.

{Background theory and research for this post is based in part on: Couple Skills, Making Your Relationship Work, by McKay, Fanning, and Paleg, New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 1994.}