What Romance Really Means After 10 Years of Marriage

This week, the Cut brings you True Romance: five days of stories about love as it’s actually lived. I’m an advice columnist, so sometimes people ask me about how they can “keep the romance alive” in their marriages.

This week, the Cut brings you True Romance: five days of stories about love as it’s actually lived.

I’m an advice columnist, so sometimes people ask me about how they can “keep the romance alive” in their marriages. This stumps me a little because, by “romance,” I know they mean the traditional version, the one that depends on living inside a giant, suspenseful question mark. This version of romance is all about that thrilling moment when you think that someone may have just materialized who will make every single thing in the world feel delicious and amazing and right forever and ever. It springs forth from big questions, like “Can I really have what I’ve been looking for? Will I really feel loved and desired and truly adored at last? Can I finally be seen as the answer to someone else’s dream, the heroine with the glimmering eyes and sultry smile?” And this version of romance peaks at the exact moment when you think, Holy Christ, I really am going to melt right into this other person (who is a relative stranger)! It really IS physically intoxicating and perfect! And it seems like we feel the exact same way about each other! Traditional romance is heady and exciting precisely because — and not in spite of the fact that — there are still lingering questions at the edges of the frame: “Will I be enough for this person? Will she stop wanting me someday? Is he as amazing as he seems/feels/tastes?”

But once you’ve been married for a long time (my tenth anniversary is in a few months!), a whole new kind of romance takes over. It’s not the romance of rom-coms, which are predicated on the question of “Will he/she really love me (which seems impossible), or does he/she actually hate me (which seems far more likely and even a little more sporting)?” Long-married romance is not the romance of watching someone’s every move like a stalker, and wanting to lick his face but trying to restrain yourself. It’s not even the romance of “Whoa, you bought me flowers, you must REALLY love me!” or “Wow, look at us here, as the sun sets, your lips on mine, we REALLY ARE DOING THIS LOVE THING, RIGHT HERE.” That’s dating romance, newlywed romance. You’re still pinching yourself. You’re still fixated on whether it’s really happening. You’re still kind of sort of looking for proof. The little bits of proof bring the romance. The question of whether you’ll get the proof you require brings the romance. (The looking for proof also brings lots of fights, but that’s a subject for another day.)

After a decade of marriage, if things go well, you don’t need any more proof. What you have instead — and what I would argue is the most deeply romantic thing of all — is this palpable, reassuring sense that it’s okay to be a human being. Because until you feel absolutely sure that you won’t eventually be abandoned, it’s maybe not 100 percent clear that any other human mortal can tolerate another human mortal. The smells. The sounds. The repetitive fixations on the same dumb shit, over and over. Even as you develop a kind of a resigned glaze of oh, this againin, say, marital years one through five, you also feel faintly unnerved by your own terrible mortal humanness.

Or you should feel that way.

For example: I talk to my dogs. A lot. My husband does not comment on how much I do this. I am a true dog lady, but one who also has a husband and kids there. While the dog lady has a long conversation with her dogs, the husband and kids are the ones who stand by, cocking their heads quizzically, trying to understand. When I walk in the door after being gone all day, I greet the dogs first. I say things like, “Oh, did you miss your mommy? Oh, you missed your mommy a lot! You needed Mommy and she wasn’t here! Poor puppies!” Then I say things to my kids like, “Hey. What’ve you guys been doing.” There’s a tonal shift. I am less enthusiastic, possibly because I’m unwell. My kids don’t seem to mind. It takes me longer to warm up and cuddle with them, possibly because they’re sometimes whining or yelling about something, or asking hard questions about playdates with kids I don’t like, and I can’t answer their questions until I take my shoes off like Mr. Rogers and lie prone for a few minutes and pour beer into my face.

That’s when I notice my husband. He missed Mommy, too.

But my husband doesn’t yell WHAT THE HELL? at me like he should. He doesn’t smirk. He doesn’t roll his eyes. I am clearly unstable, but he makes no sounds to this effect. Instead, he hugs me and smiles and says, “How was your day, baby?” He acts like he doesn’t even notice that I should be locked away forever and ever in some bad, drafty place that serves only American cheese.

And now I’m going to tell you my most romantic story of all. I was very sick out of the blue with some form of dysentery. It hit overnight. I got up to go to the bathroom, and I fainted on the way and cracked my ribs on the side of the bathtub. My husband discovered me there, passed out, in a scene that … well, imagine what would happen if you let Todd Solondz direct an episode of Game of Thrones. Think about what that might look like. I’m going to take your delicate sensibilities into account and resist the urge to paint a clearer picture for you.

My husband was not happy about this scene. But he handled it without complaint. That is the very definition of romantic: not only not being made to feel crappy about things that are clearly out of your control, but being quietly cared for by someone who can shut up and do what needs to be done under duress. That is the definition of sexy, too. People think they want a cowboy, because cowboys are rugged and macho and they don’t whine. But almost anyone can ride a stallion across a beautiful prairie and then come home and eat a giant home-cooked steak without whining about it. Entering into a Todd Solondz–directed Game of Thronesdysentery scene, though, will try the most stalwart and unflinching souls among us.

Now let’s tackle something even darker and more unpleasant, the seeming antithesis of our modern notion of romance: Someone is dying in their own bed, and someone’s spouse is sitting at the bedside, holding the dying person’s hand, and also handling all kinds of unspeakable things that people who aren’t drowning in gigantic piles of cash sometimes have to handle all by themselves. To me, that’s romance. Romance is surviving and then not surviving anymore, without being ashamed of any of it.

Because survival is ugly. Survival means sometimes smelling and sounding the wrong way. It’s one thing for a person to buy you flowers, to purchase a nice dinner, to PROVE that they truly, deeply want to have some good sweet-talky time and some touching time alone with you, and maybe they’d like to do that whole routine forever and ever and ever. That’s a heady thing. Really? Me? Forever? YOUR HEART SINGS. And you imagine eating out at nice restaurants, and screwing, and eating out and screwing and eating out and screwing. It’s like that Bongwater song about Pretty Woman, where romance boils down to “sucking and shopping and sucking and shopping and sucking and shopping!” Romance, in this view, is like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, except he’s repeating the same sexily suspenseful moment over and over again.

True romance, though, is more like the movie True Romance: Two deluded, lazy people face a bewildering sea of filth and blood and gore together, but they make it through somehow, some way, without losing their minds completely.

It’s one thing to savor the complex flavor profiles of expensive meals together. But it’s another thing entirely for another human being to listen to you try to figure out how the day went for your dogs, who cannot speak English or any other language. (“Was it hard, being without Mommy? Yes, I think it was! I think you needed your mommy, but she wasn’t here!”) And it’s another thing entirely when you start to grow an alien in your belly, one that makes you sharp-tongued and menacing, and then one day it finally comes out, all covered in white slime! That is next-level romance right there! And then, suddenly, all you do is talk to the hairless alien and feed it with your own body (a miracle!), bragging about how you make food from thin air like a GOD, and then, once the alien goes to bed, you say JESUS I’M EXHAUSTED and OUCH MY BOOBS HURT and then you pass out in a smelly, unattractive heap. That’s survival! Once you have kids, even in a first-world country, you enter a kind of simulation of third-world living. You’re feeding one kid with your body while your husband crouches on the floor of a dressing room at the mall, wiping excrement off the other kid’s butt. You and your spouse are slogging through the slop of survival together.

And it’s romantic. Mark my words.

You’re alone together less often, and when you are, you sometimes forget how to talk like adults, how to form words about your experiences. You feel more like two herd animals bumping along, all blank stares and pensive chewing. But it’s romantic how you both have no thoughts in your heads whatsoever.

The years go by, and it gets less desperate. You get sick less often because you don’t wake up 15 times a night. There’s less fecal matter to wipe up, and less grizzly-bear-mother rage at the ready. But now you’re getting older, so you say things like MY ASS HURTS a lot. “My ass hurts” is also super-romantic, though. It makes you both chuckle. You are both mortal and you’re both surviving, together, and you’re in this to the very end. You are both screwed, everything will be exactly this unexciting until one of you dies, and it’s the absolute greatest anyway.

So don’t let anyone tell you that marriage is comfortable and comforting but not romantic. Don’t let anyone tell you that living and dying together is some sad dance of codependent resignation. Our dumb culture tricks us into believing that romance is the suspense of not knowing whether someone loves you or not yet, the suspense of wanting to have sex but not being able to yet, the suspense of wanting all problems and puzzles to be solved by one person, without knowing if they have any time or affinity for your particular puzzles yet. We think romance is a mystery in which you add up clues that you will be loved. Romance must be carefully staged and art-directed, so everyone looks better than they usually do and seems sexier and better than they actually are, so the suspense can remain intact.

You are not better than you are, though, and neither is your partner. That’s romance. Laughing at how beaten-down you sometimes are, in your tireless quest to survive, is romance. It’s sexy to feel less than totally sexy and still feel like you’re sexy to one person, no matter what. Maybe suspense yields to the suspension of disbelief. Maybe looking for proof yields to finding new ways to muddle through the messes together.

But when it’s 10 p.m. and you crawl into bed like two old people and tell each other about the weird things that your kids said that day and laugh and tell stupid jokes and giggle and then maybe you feel like making out or maybe you just feel like playing a quick game of Candy Crush, all the while saying things like, “This game is stupid, it sucks” and “Your feet are freezing” and “My ass hurts,” that’s romantic. Because at some point, let’s be honest, death supplies the suspense. How long can this glorious thing last? your eyes sometimes seem to ask each other. You, for one, really hope this lasts a whole hell of a lot longer. You savor the repetitive, deliciously mundane rhythms of survival, and you want to keep surviving. You want to muddle through the messiness of life together as long as you possibly can. That is the summit. Savor it. That is the very definition of romance.

The science of regrettable decisions

A doctor explains how our brains can trick us into making bad choices — and how to fight back.

As Full House actress Lori Loughlin and her husband await their next court date, they stand accused of paying a $500,000 bribe to get their daughters into the University of Southern California as crew team recruits. Their defense is said to rest on the belief that they were making a perfectly legal donation to the university and its athletic teams (their children never rowed a competitive race in their lives).

Legal strategies and moral considerations aside, this strange behavior has left many observers wondering, “What were they thinking?” Surely, Loughlin and her family must have considered someone at the university would audit the admissions records or realize the coach’s high-profile recruits had never rowed a boat.

We may never know exactly what Loughlin and her family were thinking. But as a physician who has studied how perception alters behavior, I believe that to understand what compelled them to do something so foolish, a more relevant question would be, “What were they perceiving?”

Understanding the science of regrettable decisions

Several years ago, I joined forces with my colleague George York, a respected neurologist affiliated with the University of California Davis, to understand why smart people make foolish choices in politics, sports, relationships, and everyday life. Together, we combed through the latest brain-scanning studies and decades of psychological literature.

We compared the scientific findings with an endless array of news stories and firsthand accounts of real people doing remarkably irrational things: We examined the court testimony of a cop who, despite graduating top five in his academy, mistook his gun for a Taser and killed an innocent man. We dug through the career wreckage of a once-rising politician who, despite knowing the risks, used his work phone to send sexually explicit messages. And we found dozens of studies confirming that doctors, the people we trust to keep us safe from disease, fail to wash their hands one out of every three times they enter a hospital room, a mistake that kills thousands of patients each year.

When we read about famous people ruining their lives or hear about normal people becoming famous for public follies, we shake our heads in wonder. We tell ourselves we’d never do anything like that.

But science tells us that we would, far more often than we’d like to believe.

What alters our perceptions

In the scientific literature, George and I noticed an interesting pattern: Under the right circumstances, a subconscious neurobiological sequence in our brains causes us to perceive the world around us in ways that contradict objective reality, distorting what we see and hear. This powerful shift in perception is unrelated to our intelligence, morals, or past behaviors. In fact, we don’t even know it’s happening, nor can we control it.

George and I named this phenomenon “brainshift” and found that it happens in two distinct situations: those involving high anxiety and those associated with major reward.

Under these conditions, all of us would do something just as regrettable as the headline-grabbing stories above, contrary to what we tell ourselves. Phrased differently, we don’t consciously decide to act a fool. Rather, once our perception is distorted, we act in ways that seem reasonable to us but foolish to observers.

Javier Zarracina/Vox

How our fears and desires fool us

This neurobiological process is best observed in a research study, published in 2005 in the journal Biological Psychiatry, by the neuro-economist Gregory Berns. He recruited volunteers for what he advertised as a vision experiment. Five participants at a time were asked to look at computerized 3D shapes and decide whether the figures would match or clash when rotated. The trick was this: Four of the five test subjects were part of the research team, intentionally giving wrong answers to specific questions, which could be seen by the one non-actor in the room. Would the other answers influence that person’s selections?

Berns found that 30 percent of the subjects answered correctly every time, despite the contradictory responses given by others. MRI scans revealed that this act of nonconformity caused the participants great discomfort. It also activated an almond-shaped structure in the temporal lobes of the brain called the amygdala, which is associated with negative emotions such as fear and apprehension.

By contrast, those participants whose answers aligned with the others activated a different part of the brain called the parietal lobes. This area, near the back of the head, is responsible for our perceptions: what we see, hear, taste, and feel. Knowing the answers from the others caused their brains to subconsciously alter what they saw. Based on this changed perception, they then concurred with the others, avoiding the amygdala stimulation and associated pain they otherwise would have experienced.

Looking at the data, when subjects were presented with the erroneous answers, they gave the wrong response 41 percent of the time, but only 13 percent when deciding by themselves. In almost all cases, they felt their answers were correct. Only 3.4 percent of the subjects said they had known the right answer but went along with the majority response anyway.

If peer pressure and conscious choice were the culprits in their decisions, the participants would have been aware it was happening. But the study suggests it was a subconscious shift in perception that can occur even when subjects think they’re alone.

The case of the good seminarian

In 1973, the research duo of John Darley and Daniel Batson asked Princeton Theological Seminary students to visit a group of children across campus to deliver a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The researchers told some of the future pastors, “It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head on over.” They told others, “You’re late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago. You’d better get moving.”

While proceeding across campus, each subject passed a man slumped in a doorway, moaning and coughing.

Imagine yourself in this situation: A classroom of children awaits you but, along the way, you encounter a man who’s clearly in distress. Is there any doubt what you do? Or what religiously attuned students would do? No matter the circumstances, we’d expect everyone to help. However, only 10 percent of the “hurried” students stopped to offer assistance.

The best explanation for this behavior is that, amid the anxiety of running late, most of the students experienced a perceptual shift that caused them not to see the man or recognize his distress. Otherwise, logically, all would have stopped to help.

So far, these examples have demonstrated how people behave in the context of controlled research studies. But George and I observed the same subconscious distortion of reality play out in dozens of real-life examples throughout history.

Observing the “brainshift” process in real life

One of the more notorious examples is the case of the Norden Bombsight, a story masterfully told in Malcolm Gladwell’s famous 2011 TED talk.

It was the early days of World War II, and with Nazi aggression on the move, the Allies needed to conduct massive airstrikes to achieve victory. But US generals and senior military officials faced a fear-inducing dilemma: how to take out military targets without inadvertently killing civilians in nearby buildings? Carl Norden, a Swiss engineer, promised a solution. He claimed the Norden Bombsight could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet above.

Convinced it would save civilian lives, American leaders bought 90,000 units in 1940 and paid a modern-day equivalent of $30 billion. There was just one problem: Norden’s devices didn’t work. American flyers estimated as many as 90 percent of bombs missed their targets.

Of course, MRI machines didn’t exist in the 1940s, but we can predict what they would have found. The immense value of a precision bombing tool would have stimulated the generals’ reward centers, activated their parietal lobes, and led them to perceive the technology as effective despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Perhaps the generals would have made different decisions if they were on the battlefield themselves. This next study examines what people do when they’re directly in harm’s way.

When reward opportunities put us in life-threatening situations

To demonstrate the mind-altering effects of a dangerous situation, we turn to a 2010 episode of NBC’s Dateline called “What Were You Thinking?”

Host Chris Hansen sets the scene: “We rented this room on the fourth floor of an old building and hired these temp workers who were told they’d be doing clerical work for the day.”

The workers don’t know it, but everyone in the room is a Dateline staffer who knows what’s about to happen. As smoke begins to fill the room, the staffers pretend nothing’s wrong. The smoke is harmless, of course, but the temp workers don’t know that. It would appear the building’s on fire and yet 90 percent of applicants remain seated, even after the room has completely filled with smoke. When asked why they ignored the threat, the subjects reported that they didn’t see the situation as dangerous.

We can’t assign this illogical behavior to “groupthink” or “peer pressure,” or any explanation other than altered perception. When our safety is in jeopardy, we don’t decide to die with others just to fit in. Parents like to ask children whether they’d jump off a bridge if their friends did. They know the answer is no.

Based on the available neurobiological data, the most logical conclusion is that these temp workers, seeking the reward of a full-time position, experienced a subconscious shift in perception that led them to behave in ways they probably regretted once the show was aired. The same phenomenon was illustrated decades earlier during Stanley Milgram’s electric shock study, the kind of horrific experiment today’s scientific community would no longer permit.

Why we stick with bad decisions after we make them

The Dateline experiment showed us that situations involving fear and reward can lead to poor “snap judgments.” But what would cause someone to stand by a foolish decision?

The science of behavioral economics tells us that after we’ve made a decision, even an illogical one, we tend to cling to it. That is, we filter out dissenting information while seeking data that confirms our original viewpoints. Psychologists call this “anchoring.”

The combination of distorted perception and anchoring explains why a bevy of venture capitalists, high-ranking generals, and business tycoons all lined up to invest in Theranos, the now-disgraced blood-testing startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes.

It’s unclear whether Holmes studied or knew about the neurobiological progressions that distort our perceptions, but she used them to perfection. In her sales presentations, she played to a fear that nearly all humans share: She spoke of large-bore needles drawing vial after vial of blood and promised that her technology could make the process painless. Simultaneously, her comments triggered the reward center of the brain as she explained how just a few drops of blood could lead to the earlier detection of cancer and, in her words, create “a world in which no one ever has to say goodbye too soon.”

Just how powerful were these fear and reward triggers? By May 2015, investors had given Holmes $900 million without ever demanding to see an audited financial statement or published proof that her technology worked. Anchoring bias, brainshift’s partner in crime, explains why so many of Holmes’s board members and investors stood by her even after investigative reports began exposing the company as fraudulent.

Can we protect ourselves from this?

Based on our research, the first big step toward avoiding the dangerous consequences of brainshift is to be aware that we are all vulnerable, regardless of our ethics, social status, or IQ.

Next, we must be cognizant of situations that stoke our fears and desires: Those involving money, sex, and fame/recognition are good places to start. Before making decisions, we should ask a trusted friend or even an outsider for an opinion.

When situations allow, consult an independent expert. If an investment opportunity seems too good to be true, try talking yourself out of it. If your counterargument seems rational, listen.

Finally, and particularly in the context of reward, write down the answer to these questions:

1. What’s the worst thing that could happen?
2. How would I feel if that outcome occurred?

Had Lori Loughlin and her husband asked these questions — with the reward of a USC acceptance letter on the line — they might not be facing potential jail time.

Emotional Intelligence: The Social Skills You Weren’t Taught in School

How well do you recognize and understand your emotions? What about the emotions of those around you?

You’re taught about history, science, and math when you’re growing up. Most of us, however, aren’t taught how to identify or deal with our own emotions, or the emotions of others. These skills can be valuable, but you’ll never get them in a classroom.

Emotional intelligence is a shorthand that psychological researchers use to describe how well individuals can manage their own emotions and react to the emotions of others. People who exhibit emotional intelligence have the less obvious skills necessary to get ahead in life, such as managing conflict resolution, reading and responding to the needs of others, and keeping their own emotions from overflowing and disrupting their lives. In this guide, we’ll look at what emotional intelligence is, and how to develop your own.

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Measuring emotional intelligence is relatively new in the field of psychology, only first being explored in the mid-80s. Several models are currently being developed, but for our purposes, we’ll examine what’s known as the “mixed model,” developed by psychologist Daniel Goleman. The mixed model has five key areas:

• Self-awareness: Self-awareness involves knowing your own feelings. This includes having an accurate assessment of what you’re capable of, when you need help, and what your emotional triggers are.
• Self-management: This involves being able to keep your emotions in check when they become disruptive. Self-management involves being able to control outbursts, calmly discussing disagreements, and avoiding activities that undermine you like extended self-pity or panic.
• Motivation: Everyone is motivated to action by rewards like money or status. Goleman’s model, however, refers to motivation for the sake of personal joy, curiosity, or the satisfaction of being productive.
• Empathy: While the three previous categories refer to a person’s internal emotions, this one deals with the emotions of others. Empathy is the skill and practice of reading the emotions of others and responding appropriately.
• Social skills: This category involves the application of empathy as well as negotiating the needs of others with your own. This can include finding common ground with others, managing others in a work environment, and being persuasive. 

You can read a bit more about these different categories here. The order of these emotional competencies isn’t all that relevant, as we all learn many of these skills simultaneously as we grow. It’s also important to note that, for our purposes, we’ll only be using this as a guide. Emotional intelligence isn’t an area that most people receive formal training in. We’ll let psychologists argue over the jargon and models, but for now let’s explore what each of these mean and how to improve them in your own life.

Self-Awareness

Before you can do anything else here, you have to know what your emotions are. Improving your self-awareness is the first step to identifying any problem area you’re facing. Here are some ways to improve your self-awareness:

• Keep a journal: Career skill blog recommends starting by keeping a journal of your emotions . At the end of every day, write down what happened to you, how you felt, and how you dealt with it. Periodically, look back over your journal and take note of any trends, or any time you overreacted to something.
• Ask for input from others: As we’ve talked about before when dealing with your self-perception, input from others can be invaluable . Try to ask multiple people who know you well where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Write down what they say, compare what they say to each other and, again, look for patterns. Most importantly, don’t argue with them. They don’t have to be correct. You’re just trying to gauge your perception from another’s point of view.
• Slow down (or meditate): Emotions have a habit of getting the most out of control when we don’t have time to slow down or process them . The next time you have an emotional reaction to something, try to pause before you react (something the internet makes easier than ever, if you’re communicating online). You can also try meditating to slow your brain down and give your emotional state room to breathe. 

If you’ve never practiced intentional self-awareness, these tips should give you a practical head start. One strategy I personally use is to go on long walks or have conversations with myself discussing what’s bothering me. Often, I’ll find that the things I say to the imaginary other end of the conversation can give me some insight into what’s really bugging me. The important aspect is to look inwards, rather than focusing solely on external factors.

Self-Management

Once you know how your emotions work, you can start figuring out how to handle them. Proper self-management means controlling your outbursts, distinguishing between external triggers and internal over-reactions, and doing what’s best for your needs.

One key way to manage your emotions is to change your sensory input. You’ve probably heard the old advice to count to ten and breathe when you’re angry. Speaking as someone who’s had plenty of overwhelming issues with depression and anger, this advice is usually crap (though if it works for you, more power to you). However, giving your physical body a jolt can break the cycle. If you’re feeling lethargic, do some exercise. If you’re stuck in an emotional loop, give yourself a “snap out of it” slap. Anything that can give a slight shock to your system or break the existing routine can help.

Lifehacker alum Adam Dachis also recommends funneling emotional energy into something productive. It’s alright to let overwhelming emotions stew inside you for a moment, if it’s not an appropriate time to let them out. However, when you do, rather than vent it on something futile, turn it into motivation instead:

I recently started playing tennis for fun, knowing that I’d never become exceptional because I began too late in life. I’ve become better and have a very minor talent for the game, so when I play poorly I now know and I get down on myself. When up against an opponent with far more skill I find it hard to do much else than get angry. Rather than let that anger out, I take note of it and use it to fuel my desire to practice more. Whether in sports, work, or everyday life, we can get complacent with our skill and forget that we always have some room for improvement. When you start to get mad, get better instead.

You can’t always control what makes you feel a certain way, but you can always control how you react. If you have some impulse control problems, find ways to get help when you’re feeling calm. Not all emotions can be vented away. My struggle with depression taught me that some emotions persist long after the overflow. However, there’s always a moment when those feelings feel a little less intense. Use those moments to seek help.

Motivation

We talk about motivation a lot . When we’re talking about motivation as it relates to emotional intelligence, however, we don’t just mean getting up the energy to go to work. We’re talking about your inner drive to accomplish something. That drive isn’t just some feel-goody nonsense, either. As Psychology today explains, there’s a section of your prefrontal cortex that lights up at the mere thought of achieving a meaningful goal.

Whether your goal is building a career, raising a family, or creating some kind of art, everyone has something they want to do with their life.When your motivation is working for you, it connects with reality in tangible ways. Want to start a family? Motivated people will start dating. Want to improve your career? Motivated people will educate themselves, apply for new jobs, or angle for a promotion.

Daniel Goleman suggests that in order to start making use of that motivation, you first need to identify your own values. Many of us are so busy that we don’t take the time to examine what our values really are. Or worse, we’ll do work that directly contradicts what we value for so long that we lose that motivation entirely.

Unfortunately, we can’t give you the answer for what it is you want in life, but there are lots of strategies you can try . Use your journal to find times when you’ve felt fulfilled. Create a list of things you value. Most of all, accept the uncertainty in life and just build something. Fitness instructor Michael Mantell, Ph.D suggests that using lesser successes you know you can accomplish. Remember, everyone who’s accomplished something you want to achieve did it slowly, over time.

Empathy

Your emotions are only one half of all your relationships. It’s the half you focus on the most, sure, but that’s only because you hang out with yourself every day. All the other people that matter to you have their own set of feelings, desires, triggers, and fears. Empathy is your most important skill for navigating your relationships. Empathy is a life-long skill, but here are some tips you can use to practice empathy:

• Shut up and listen: We’re gonna start with the hardest one here, because it’s the most important. You can’t experience everyone else’s lives to fully understand them, but you can listen. Listening involves letting someone else talk and then not countering what they say. It means putting aside your preconceptions or skepticism for a bit and allowing the person you’re talking to a chance to explain how they feel. Empathy is hard, but virtually every relationship you have can be improved at least marginally by waiting at least an extra ten seconds before you retake the conversation.
• Take up a contrary position to your own: One of the quickest ways to solidify an opinion in your mind is to argue in favor of it. To counter this, take up a contrary position. If you think your boss is being unreasonable, try defending their actions in your head. Would you find their actions reasonable if you were in their shoes? Even asking the questions of yourself can be enough to start empathizing with another’s point of view (though, of course, getting real answers from others can always help).
• Don’t just know, try to understand: Understanding is key to having empathy. As we’ve discussed before, understanding is the differencebetween knowing something and truly empathizing with it. If you catch yourself saying, “I know, but,” a lot, take that as an indicator that you should pause a bit more. When someone tells you about an experience that’s not your own, take some time to mull over how your life might be different if you experienced that on a daily basis. Read about it until it clicks. It’s okay if you don’t spend all your time devoted to someone else’s life, but putting in just some time—even if it’s idle thought time while you work—can be beneficial. 

By definition , empathy means getting in the emotional dirt with someone else. Allowing their experiences to resonate with your own and responding appropriately. It’s okay to offer advice or optimism, but empathy also requires that you wait for the right space to do that. If someone’s on the verge of tears, or sharing some deep pain, don’t make light of it and don’t try to minimize the hurt. Be mindful of how they must feel and allow them space to feel it.

Social Skills

Summing up all social skills in one section of an article would do about as much justice to the topic as if we snuck in a brief explainer on astrophysics. However, the tools you develop in the other four areas will help you resolve a lot of social problems that many adults still wrestle with. As Goleman explains, your social skills affect everything from your work performance to your romantic life:

Social competence takes many forms – it’s more than just being chatty. These abilities range from being able to tune into another person’s feelings and understand how they think about things, to being a great collaborator and team player, to expertise at negotiation. All these skills are learned in life. We can improve on any of them we care about, but it takes time, effort, and perseverance. It helps to have a model, someone who embodies the skill we want to improve. But we also need to practice whenever a naturally occurring opportunity arises – and it may be listening to a teenager, not just a moment at work.

You can start with the most common form of social problems: resolving a disagreement. This is where you get to put all your skills to the test in a real-world environment. We’ve gone into this subject in-depth here , but we can summarize the basic steps:

• Identify and deal with your emotions: Whenever you have an argument with someone else, things can get heated. If someone involved is emotionally worked up, deal with that problem first. Take time apart to vent, blow off steam on your own, then return to the problem. In a work environment, this may just mean complaining to a friend before you email your boss back. In a romantic relationship, remind your partner that you care about them before criticizing.
• Address legitimate problems once you’re both calm: Once you’re in your right headspace, identify what the conflict is. Before you jump to solutions, make sure you and the other person agree on what the problems really are . Propose solutions that are mutually beneficial and be sympathetic to any concessions the other person may be unwilling to make (but be sure to stand firm on your own).
• End on a cooperative note: Whether in business or pleasure, relationships work best when everyone involved knows that they’re on the same page. Even if you can’t end on a positive note, make sure that the last intention you communicate is a cooperative one. Let your boss/coworker/significant other know that you want to work towards the same goal, even if you have different views. 

Not every type of interaction with another person will be a conflict, of course. Some social skills just involve meeting new people , socializing with people of different mindsets , or just playing games . However, resolving conflict can be one of the best ways to learn how to apply your emotional skills. Disputes are best resolved when you know what you want, can communicate it clearly, understand what someone else wants, and come to favorable terms for everyone. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that this involves every other area of the emotional intelligence model.