How Buying a Watch Can Help Save Your Marriage

No, this is not a time management article! Although, I’m sure that would help a lot of folks improve their marriage as well.

I'm talking about something more fundamental.This is about an evidence- based strategy for managing your emotions during times of marital distress and conflict.

As I outline in my previous marriage saving articles, half of all marriages end in divorce and 80% of couples are having extra marital affairs.

Divorce can now be predicted with almost 100% accuracy based on how couples communicate and emotionalize around very common hot button issues, like money management, sex and conflict with the in-laws.

The good news is that 80 to 90% of these couples can effectively reverse or permanently buffer against these harmful trends. They can actually transform otherwise devastating relationship experiences into key relationship building opportunities.

Evidence-Based Couple-Communication

Everyone’s heard about the critical role of effective-communication and conflict management in a healthy marriage. Yet how can seriously emotionally distressed couples communicate effectively if they’ve become so entrenched in reactive fear and anger that they can’t even think strait?

The answer is by learning the relaxation response and selectively self-inducing relaxation in place of their previously marriage busting pattern of negative emotionalizing. And here’s where buying a watch can literally play a major role in saving your marriage.

How Can We Communicate When Stressed Out or Angry?

In my private practice I’ve worked with hundreds of couple’s and individuals whose intense reactive emotional responding (getting angry, arguing, criticizing, shutting down, high anxiety etc.) was significantly interfering with or even destroying their most important human relationships.

I realized early on that really teaching and learning about the relaxation response with them would have incredible, measurable benefits for the majority of my private practice and behavioral consulting clients.

Then Came "The Watch"

About 7 years ago my wife bought me a heart rate monitoring watch so that I could monitor and target my optimal heart rate during exercise. I was working with a client who was having difficulty learning and applying the standard relaxation techniques I was teaching as part of my counseling intervention.

I was in a hurry that morning so I forgot to change watches. While working with this client I noticed I was wearing my work-out watch while taking notes.

I suddenly realized that the heart-rate monitoring watch could serve as an excellent bio-feedback tool that would let this client measure her progress at learning how to self-induce relaxation during high stress family and work situations.

Stopping to monitor her heart rate would also serve as powerful cognitive behavioral thought-stopping strategy. She wouldn’t be able to think anxiety or anger provoking thoughts if she had to stop and think about reducing her heart-rate by practicing her relaxation training skills.

The happy chemicals from her relaxation response would naturally reinforce and maintain new positive and healthier “self-talk”.

The Watch and The Anxious Client

This is true of evidence-based couples communication as well, but even more so through the positive behavioral momentum created by deep mutual needs-meeting and attachment based emotional soothing.

This client could simply stop and measure her heart rate whenever she felt herself getting anxious, angry or frustrated. She could then work at reducing her heart rate as a positive measure of her ability to self-invoke relaxation.

The more relaxed she was, the more she could communicate effectively with her husband, her rambunctious children and her difficult boss at work. With this watch, we were able to make measurable therapeutic gains that we couldn’t even approach in the 2 months of prior counseling work together.

When angered or anxious this client could now bring her heart rate down from 130-150 beats per minute down to 60-70 in less than 90 seconds! This client could now literally relax in high stress situations.

Strong Love is Best Served Calm

After this incredible clinical experience, I realized that this heart rate monitoring watch would have powerful implications for my marital counseling work with highly distressed couples, - couples on the verge of full breakdown and divorce.

It would also have wider applications and benefits in areas such as effectively parenting around high-stress problem behaviors with kids and teens.

Since that first client, the watch has been in an important tool in my clinical approach and one that I know can benefit you, your marriage and your family in ways you may not be able to even imagine right now.

Here are some helpful suggestions for how to maximize your use of this unsuspecting marriage transformation tool, - the heart rate monitoring watch:

• · You can buy a good heart rate monitoring watch at most sports shops, drug stores and of course online. I have used many different types of these watches and you can find one for around $30-50 dollars that will do the trick.
• I prefer the ones that derive their information directly from your pulse in your wrist or in your finger. But the more detailed information that therapists and more serious relaxation trainers can get from the chest ban variety is well worth the small investment. There are
• These watches graph and display heart rate and other bio-metrics. Some are like wearing a portable bio-feedback device on your wrist If you can afford it, why not?
• · It is essential that you and your partner train in the relaxation response. Having the watch by itself is not enough to really learn how to get those marriage-busting emotional responses under control once and for all.
• · Remember that mastering the ability to selectively self-induce the relaxation response is only 1 of 2 core relationship transformation and maintenance strategies. You must also learn and practice evidence-based couple’s communication as well.
• These are highly complementary tools that once learned and implemented over a couple of months will become automatic, like learning to drive a car properly.
• Learning to relax creates and maintains the emotional space for implementing the science-proven communication strategies you're learning to save your relationship. Both take time and effort at first, but the payoffs include a stronger, more resilient and affair proofed marriage!
• If you're looking for an easy to follow plan to save or transform your marriage, check out my "Evidence-Based Marriage-Transformation Tools"!