Four Steps for Tuning to the Frequency of Love

This episode unpacks the concept of “attunement” from relationship researcher John Gottman, a practice of noticing, honoring, and responding to a loved one’s emotions. I tell the story of Leo and Melinda as a kitchen-table moment goes wrong, then gets replayed and done right. 

You’ll find the four building blocks of attunement that build love: awareness, non-judgmental listening, curiosity, and compassion. We can connect the ideas to Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the Samaritan well as a reflection of how God is attuned to us. 

Think of one person in your life who needs to feel tuned in to today — and try the four steps in your next conversation with them. Then share this episode with someone who could use the reminder.

Transcript

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A small radio filled my bedroom with music when I was a teenager. I was tuned to KQYX for the top 40 hits of the mid-1960s. There were other stations, but every teenager in Joplin, Missouri used the dial on their transistor radio to listen to this station. Hi folks, I'm Larry Payne, your host of Tracks for the Journey, a podcast and video cast dedicated to your well-being through spirituality, psychology, and ethics. Today let's talk about relationships in this episode. To have a loving relationship, we must tune into the other's emotions and needs. So let's dig into this idea by hearing from the famous psychological researcher John Gottman and his team. They are the premier researchers on relationships. Many years ago, psychologist John Gottman set up a lab for couples to talk about their marriage. He recorded the sessions and analyzed them in minute detail. Then he tracked what happened to them across several years. It was groundbreaking work that has shaped marriage counseling and relationship studies for all of the decades since. A key finding is how vital it is to practice attunement. Gottman describes attunement as understanding the emotions of the other person, tuning in to what the other person is feeling. Just as I tuned into that radio station on my old Zenith Radio as a teenager. Let's think about Leo, who comes in from his long day at work to find Melinda crying as she sits at the kitchen table. Leo spouse, what is wrong with you now? Hearing this, she bursts into sobs and runs from the room. So what does Leo need? He needs to learn the skill of attunement with Melinda. So how do we do that? How do we tune into what another person is experiencing? The Gottman team identifies several steps that all of us can take. We do this by first being aware of what the other person is feeling. It might involve watching body language or paying attention to the emotional tone of the conversation. Leo at least took notice that Melinda was crying, so we can give him a score for awareness. The next step is even more important. We tune into the emotional state of our friend or loved one without judgment or dismissal. We accept what the other is feeling as valid and important. We hold back our reactions and prepare for the next skill. Leo failed on this aspect miserably. He characterized her emotions as something wrong or unnecessary. What's wrong with you now? His words echoed previous troubles, and that just diminished his response even more. The next thing we must do is actively seek to understand what the other person is experiencing. That starts with active listening that absorbs their story, not ours. We pause our reaction so we can respond wisely to what the other person is feeling and focus our full attention on that. Asking with true interest and non-judgment would honor Melinda as a person. Well, Leo failed to honor Melinda's emotions, but he could still make a positive turn by following her out of the room with an apology and some real interest. Even a half-hearted question of, okay, well what is it? Might make a difference. Finally, if Melinda does want to talk, he should offer compassion. Compassion means we reach deep inside our own experience to find where we have felt the same. This is empathy, the connection of the other and ourselves in mutual experience. So let's click the rewind button to the moment Leo walks into the room. What could he have done differently? Well first we noted he paid attention to her tears, that's a great first step. Then he could gently begin tuning into her experience. He could say what's going on? This question seeks understanding. Now it must have a caring tone and not the harsh judgment he showed at first, that's crucial. Because tone indicates emotion. Now he must listen without dismissal, judgment, or jumping in to tell her how to solve the problem. Feeling like Leo really cared, Melinda would share the hurt she felt from the unexpected negative annual evaluation at work. She thought she had a good rating on all the assignments. She had always been on time and had gotten along well with others, but the poor review hit her so hard. All she could do was cry as he came in. The final step cannot be missed if we want to build greater love, intimacy, or even friendship. We must start connecting our own experiences of criticism to what the other person might feel. So let's think about Leo. It wasn't hard for him because his boss had chewed him out in the past for failing to make a sale that seemed a sure thing. And with that mutual shared empathy, the conversation could become an experience that builds the relationship. Together, Leo and Melinda might decide to get a bite at their favorite restaurant to salve their feelings and gain perspective. Now Christians see Jesus' interactions with others as reflecting this attunement. The story of his meeting with a woman at the well shows this insight. The key component is that Jesus paid attention. He could have allowed the ethnic animosity between Jews and Samaritans to cause him to ignore her. He could have followed the patriarchal views common to that culture to ignore her as a second class citizen, as a woman. But he tuned himself to who she was and what she needed on that day to connect in a transformative way. You and I can translate this reality of a historical event into our spiritual situation as a window that reveals God's attitude toward each of us now. God is tuned to our every emotion, knowing them more deeply than anyone could have ever known them. We can leverage this pervasive, loving relationship for a lifetime of spiritual development and emotional health. Awareness, non-judgmental listening, compassion and empathy are the components that can make a relationship rock solid. Attunement is harder than simply tuning the analog dial of an old radio, but is worth every effort to make our relationships rich. So let's say as we close, good luck, Leo and Melinda.